


The Beekeeper (Old Version)

by catchinglugia



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Brain Damage, Brain Injury, Humanstuck, Multi, Sadstuck, Suicide, life lessons growin up shit, self injury
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-09-27
Updated: 2013-01-08
Packaged: 2017-11-15 03:19:40
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Rape/Non-Con, Underage
Chapters: 7
Words: 24,953
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/522568
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/catchinglugia/pseuds/catchinglugia
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sollux Captor is fifteen and three years ago his life changed completely. Now, he's just trying to keep his life from falling apart.</p><p>--</p><p>Revised and restarted version posted.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Easy Does It

**Author's Note:**

> A/N: I don't like this chapter at ALL ahhh but whatever. I will probably like it more once I post the other chapters. 
> 
> Anyways. Um. Here is a really depressing humanstuck fic.

“If we don't change, we don't grow. If we don't grow, we aren't really living.”

**Gail Sheehy  
**

-

_Ask someone, anyone at all. Stop them and ask “Are you scared of change?”_   
_They will say “Yes.”_   
_If anyone says otherwise, they are lying._

-

                Sollux wakes up in the middle of the night, shivering. It’s raining outside and wind whips against the old glass window beside his bed in the rickety, large farmhouse. Sollux wraps the blanket around himself tighter, but the chill still seeps in through the walls. After a few minutes Sollux huffs and sits up; the blanket falls to his waist and he blindly reaches towards his end table. He knocks over a glass of water, and curses, and then finally finds his glasses, slipping them on.  
                His room comes into view, sharpening: yellow walls (the same yellow his fathers first painted the room when he was born), wooden floors, and clutter. His desk is strewn with old homework assignments and his prized laptop; inside of the drawers are books on coding and gaming magazines. The corkboard above his desk has a calendar from two years ago on it, miscellaneous pictures of him and Karkat and others, and tons and tons of crayon doodles from his older brother Mituna.  
                Beside his desk is a bookshelf, mainly filled with fantasy novels and science fiction stuff. There are also a couple of old picture books from when he and Mituna were little. In front of the bookshelf, on the floor, is a rug which covers a particularly chipped floorboard. On the opposite side of the room is Sollux’s clunky television and PS3.  
                Sollux slips out of bed and stretches, stepping over the puddle of water, too lazy to wipe it up. He makes his way towards his desk, knowing trying to go back to sleep is futile; or at least for him and the other Captors. Sollux thinks it runs in the family.  
                 He throws on the jacket from the back of his chair and sits, curled up in a ball, the leather cushion cool against his bare feet. He opens up his laptop and squints at the light, before putting in his password.  
                The computer tells him it’s four in the morning, which isn’t so bad. He’d have to get up at five anyway. Sollux yawns and his fingers fly across the keyboard. He checks the forums he has bookmarked, his blog, and—condescendingly—Facebook. Mituna told him to get one, and Sollux always thought it was rather stupid. He doesn’t talk to anyone, but scrolling through his wall or whatever can be pretty amusing, when not excruciatingly annoying—especially when Karkat starts arguing with someone.  
                At four thirty Sollux starts fiddling around with some codes—he’s been working on a video game all summer—when he stops, fingertips stilling against the keys. His eyes flick to the doorway, and then at the window; lightning flashes and Sollux sighs, closing his laptop. He rises from his desk, stumbling because his feet are asleep.  
                Mituna said not to check on him anymore, but how can Sollux not? The thought of his brother whimpering, holding his helmet onto his head as if it’ll disappear, cowering under the covers sends shivers down Sollux’s spine, especially after _that day_ , after Mituna started hitting himself whenever he thought he did something particularly bad— _I’m stupid,_ he’ll say, crying, _I’m stupid and it’s all my fault, just like he said—I’m sorry. I’m sorry._  
                Sollux walks down the hallway, passing his parents’ door. The floor creaks underneath his feet. He reaches Mituna’s room, the final room on the right before the stairs. The doorknob is freezing against his hand.  
                “Mituna?” Sollux whispers, stepping inside. The walls are black, a product of Mituna’s short-lived angry, rebellious streak from when he was thirteen. He painted the walls himself, proclaiming he was expressing his feelings or something. Sollux was ten, then. Mituna was also normal. Sollux quickly takes away the thought, but it was there nonetheless.  
                A helmet pops out from underneath a thick quilt. The headgear gets pushed back with a manicured hand. Mituna sits up, the blanket pooling around his hips. He’s only wearing a black t-shirt and boxers. He moves the helmet to his lap, and starts fiddling with it. His straight black hair, stopping at his chin, is ruffled. A vein-like scar shows from underneath his bangs, brushing his left eye and stretching across his forehead. He has to be freezing. Sollux bites the side of his cheek. Mituna’s room seems ten degrees cooler than his own.  
                “What are you doing?” Mituna asks softly, looking at Sollux; he blinks. Lightning flashes and Mituna cringes as shadows fall across his face eerily, but a second later the shadows are gone.  
                “I juth—” Sollux starts.  
                “I told you to st-stop checking up on me,” Mituna mutters. He glares down at his helmet, hands stilling. “I’m not a baby.”  
                “Of courthe you aren’t.”  
                “Dad and Pop act like I’m one.”  
                Sollux walks forward, narrowly dodging a massive construction of Legos. He pauses at Mituna’s bed, but his brother shuffles to the side, allowing him room.  
                “Dad and Pop treat me like I’m a baby, too,” Sollux assures. He sits next to his brother. “We’re their kidth. It’th thuppothed to be like that.”  
                “I know it’s not the—the same,” Mituna whispers. He glares at Sollux. “I’m not stupid.”  
                “I don’t think you are,” Sollux says honestly. “I gueth I wath jutht trying to make you feel better or thomething… Sorry.”  
                Mituna bumps Sollux’s shoulder, smiling. “Your lisp is funny.”  
                Sollux snorts. He grins. “At leath I don’t thutter all the time.”  
                Mituna laughs softly and puts his helmet back on, leaving it unbuckled and the blue and red plastic that falls over his eyes up. Some of his hair sticks out from under it. A large lock sits right between his eyes. Sollux reaches over, silently tucking it up.  
                “I love you,” Mituna suddenly says. Sollux stares at him, letting his hand fall. He looks down, comparing his disproportioned, cold hands to Mituna’s warm, soft ones. Mituna’s nails are painted in a nude pink.  
                “I love you too,” he answers.  
                Mituna stands up, the bed sheets ruffling with him, “Let’s play Call of Duty,” he says. He starts dashing to the door of his room, but trips over the giant thing he was building with Legos and crashes to the floor. Sollux laughs, not unkindly. Mituna huffs, lying face first.  
                “I’ll see if Karkat’th on,” Sollux says, stepping around his brother. Mituna lifts an arm, flipping him off. Sollux ignores him.    
                He walks back to his room and plops down into his desk chair, opening his laptop yet again. He looks back at the tiny analog clock on the toolbar. It’s five.  
                Sollux opens up Pesterchum.

                TA: what2 up  
                TA: are you awake  
                CC: HELLO FUCK FACE.  
                CC: HOW KIND OF YOU TO GRACE ME WITH YOUR PRESENCE.  
                TA: ii2 that a ye2??  
                TA: and why are you even on thii2 ii2 2urprii2iing  
                CC: HAPPY TO SEE YOU’RE ALIVE.  
                CC: I’M FINE, TOO, THANKS FOR ASKING.  
                TA: kk come on  
                CC: DO NOT *COME ON* ME, CAPTOR  
                CC: WE HAVEN’T TALKED IN A FUCKING MONTH.  
                TA: iive been bu2y  
                CC: WITH WHAT??????? NOT EATING? STAYING AWAKE FOR DAYS? FROLICKING THROUGH YOUR FUCKING BEE FARM WITH YOUR BEE FRIENDS?  
                TA: a2 a matter of fact ye2  
                TA: that ii2 all iive been doiing karkat  
                TA: you gue22ed correctly  
                CC: OF COURSE I GUESSED GODDAMN CORRECTLY BECAUSE WE ARE  
                CC: BEST  
                CC: FRIENDS  
                CC: OR DID YOU FORGET THAT?????  
                CC: WAS IT ME, SOLLUX? DID I DRIVE YOU AWAY? DID MY INTELLIGENCE INTIMIDATE YOU?  
                TA: ye2 that wa2 iit  
                TA: that ii2 what happened  
                CC: SERIOUSLY THOUGH, YOU BAG OF DICKS  
                CC: WHAT IS GOING ON.  
                TA: nothiing dude  
                TA: ii ju2t havent really talked two anyone  
                CC: THAT MUCH IS OBVIOUS  
                TA: ii dont know 2eriiously  
                CC: WHATEVER  
                CC: I DON’T FEEL LIKE GOING THROUGH THIS RIGHT NOW  
                CC: SO WHAT DO YOU WANT  
                TA: miituna want2 two play black op2  
                TA: you iin  
                CC: YOU FUCKING KNOW I AM  
                CC: PREPARE TO GET YOUR ASS KICKED  
                CC: GRAB THE BLANKET FROM YOUR INFANCY THAT HOLDS SENTIMENTAL VALUE AND A BUCKET FOR YOUR TEARS AND READY YOURSELF FOR THIS ONSLAUGHT OF ASS FUCKING WHOOPING  
                TA: we both know that my brother and ii are fuckiing profe22iional2  
                TA: ju2t get onliine jacka22  
                 
                Sollux shakes his head at the screen and moves to his PS3, turning it on and sitting on the floor Indian style. He yells for his brother over his shoulder.  
                Mituna walks in a few minutes later, just as Sollux is swapping Final Fantasy XIII for Black Ops. Sollux twists around, biting back a sigh when he sees the giant tub of Legos in his brother’s hands. “What are you doing?”  
                Mituna sits down, setting the box beside him, and starts building. “I changed my mind,” he says, having already built a black square. He starts connecting yellow blocks, and Sollux wonders what he’s going to make. He’s made houses, castles, battles ships, and other stuff before. Mituna looks up, as if reading Sollux’s thoughts. “I’m building a giant bee.”  
                “Whatever.” Sollux turns back to the screen and puts his headphones on. He tries to beat down the burning at his chest; playing video games with Mituna is a comfort. It reminds him of…before.  
                 Karkat connects with him and Sollux tries to smile as the game begins in Nuketown.  
                “Good morning dickhead,” Karkat snaps. Sollux can hear loud music.  
                “Hello to you, too.” Sollux runs up the stairs behind a house and enters a room. He walks forward. Someone comes rushing up the stairs, and he stabs them. He quickly moves on.  
                “Where’s Mituna?”  
                Sollux swallows. “Legos.”  
                “That’s cool, whatever.” Sollux wants to scream _no, it’s not cool. It’s awful and I want my brother back._ But he doesn’t. He doesn’t.  
                “Who all ith on? It’th like five thirty.”  
                “Some people are awake during the night and well until the morning, Sollux. Not all of us live on a goddamn bee farm.”  
                “It’th not my fault, take it up with my dadth.” Sollux stations himself at a window, crouched down.  
                “’Dad and Pop’? No thanks.”  
                “What am I thuppothed to call ‘em,” Sollux shoots a person entering the room, “Dad and Daddy?”  
                “I don’t know. Pop makes him sound like a grandpa.”  
                “Pop ith perfectly fine.”  
                “Is—is Karkat talking about Pop?” Mituna asks. Sollux glances at him and then turns back at the screen quickly.  
                “Yeah,” he says. Mituna doesn’t answer.  
                “So, anyways, school starts soon—finally, after that fucking lightning or whatever. Are you as excited as I am?” Karkat asks.  
                “I’m thitting my panth, you have no idea.”  
                “That’s gross,” Mituna comments.  
                A few minutes and senseless chatter later, Sollux and Karkat move to a new map.  
                “Have you—” Sollux nearly asks if Karkat has talked Terezi lately, but then he remembers that Mituna is in the room.  
                “What?” Karkat asks. His breath makes the headphones buzz.  
                “Nothing,” Sollux says. “Later.”  
                About seven minutes into the game the other side gets a plane, and the usual sound effect plays as it passes over. Mituna makes a small shriek. “Could—could you turn that down, Sollux?”  
                Sollux sighs and leans over, pressing the down button on the front of the TV and resumes playing. Sollux fucks around, nonchalant, kicking ass without even trying. Karkat spews out chains of curses, dying over and over. Sollux laughs at him, and someone lets out dogs. Their barks are loud and Sollux shoots one in the face.  
                “It’s too loud!” Mituna yells. Sollux turns to him. Mituna’s curled up, hands shoved underneath his helmet to cover his ears. His eyes are screwed shut. Suddenly, a gunshot can be heard, and Sollux whips to the screen. Someone killed him.  
                It gets hard to breathe. Mituna is whimpering. Even if dying isn’t a big deal, even if he’s already respawned, Sollux screams, “Jethuth, Mituna, thut the fuck up!”  
                Mituna freezes, and Sollux notices the tear tracks on his face. His older brother’s face contorts and he stands, taking the plastic bee he was building with him. He chucks the cube of Legos at the wall, where it shatters. Sollux swears loudly, angrily, and Mituna makes the red and blue plastic cover his eyes, a sure sign that he’s angry. The _fucking eighteen year old_ stomps out and down the stairs. Sollux hears the screen door fly open, and he knows Mituna is running towards the bee yard.  
                “What the fuck,” Karkat says shortly.  
                “Don’t give me that thit,” Sollux snaps. “You don’t know what ith like, living with it every goddamn day. It’th not like I don’t have my problemth, too.”  
                “You just screamed at him.”  
                “Fuck off, KK.” Sollux rips the headphones off and turns off his Playstation. He lets out a frustrated groan and falls onto his back, staring at the cracked ceiling. He closes his eyes, suddenly very, very, tired.  
                Sollux doesn’t know how much later it is, but he falls asleep and is woken up with a kick to the side, and a hard one at that. He grunts, rolling into a ball. One of his fathers—Pop—looms over him, with short brown hair, laugh lines, and a permanent 5 o’ clock shadow. He’s wearing a flannel and jeans, dressed for the day. “What’s going on?” he asks angrily.  
                “Nothing,” Sollux spits, moving his heated gaze from his father to his father’s boots, “it’th juth Mituna being Mituna.” The floor is cold against his cheek.  
                Pop puts his hands on his hips. “Don’t ever fucking say that.” His words are sharp. Angry.  
                “It’th true,” Sollux says, staring at a scuff mark.  
                “You’re grounded.”  
                Sollux gapes, sitting up. “What the fuck?” he exclaims. He points at the mess of Legos on the floor. “Look at what Mituna did! He should get grounded too.” Sollux takes in an exasperated gasp. He changes tactics. “Ith not fair! Why am I getting punithed becauthe Mituna can’t handle fucking anything?!”  
                Pop glares. “You aren’t crying in the yard, are you?”  
                “Mituna’th juth a puthy!”  
                “Think about your brother, Sollux,” Pop snaps. Sollux can see his jaw move as he grinds his teeth; an old habit. “Think about what _he_ goes through.”  
                “I do!” Sollux replies. “I think about Mituna all the goddamn time! My fucking life revolveth around him!”  
                His father suddenly grabs the collar of his shirt and forces him to stand up, and then pulls him close. Sollux stumbles, losing his blanace. Pop’s breath smells like toothpaste. “Last year,” Pop says, “when Mituna was seventeen. He went out to the forest and tried to drown himself in the creek. Do you remember that? Or is it just me?”  
                _I tried to kill myself too,_ Sollux thinks. _You just don’t know it._ He opens his mouth and then closes it. He doesn’t say it. Doesn’t say it.  
                He pushes his father’s hand off of him and walks out the door. “Where are you going,” Pop asks. Sollux starts to run when Pop starts following him, both of their footsteps making the floor whine—the entire house has wooden floorboards, the old kind. The walls are a blue pastel blur. The doors to the bathroom, his parents’ room, and Mituna’s room are white blobs as Sollux rushes past.  
                “I don’t know,” he answers, sprinting down the stairs. He makes it to the front door and opens it, pushing open the screen door which slams behind him. Sollux’s feet pound against the rotting porch and he runs in the grass, getting his legs and feet soaked with morning dew and rain water. The storm let up, he realizes.  
                 Wind pushes his hair back and to his left is the gravel road and to the right, yards away, is the bee yard behind the house: rows and rows of hives; thousands of bees and tons of honey. The sun is beginning to show, the sky now a yellowing, purple bruise. Sollux pants and chokes on his spit. But he doesn’t stop running.  
                He can hear his father’s truck on the gravel behind him. Adrenaline spikes and Sollux runs faster. He crosses the road and slams into large stalks of corn, all of them ready to harvest. He forgets whose land this is. The summer was nice and rain plentiful. The crops are splendid and tall, taller than Sollux. The tops of the stalks brush the sky, obscuring most of it from view.  
                Eventually, Sollux’s legs ache and his arms grow sore. He knows he’s going to hit the edge of the corn field, so he takes a sharp right. Cuts form on his face, his neck, and his hands, from the leaves. He starts sweating underneath his pajamas and the jacket. Sollux once heard that if you run and you start feeling bad, you need to keep running. There’s something about endorphins. The final blast energy…  
                But Sollux does not think it’s going to come. He stops, suddenly, and collapses, and lies down between the stalks of corn, arms and legs spread out, body like a star. He looks up at the sky, and it’s completely golden now, with thin smears of blue.  
                Sollux’s throat is terribly dry. He tries to swallow, but then gags. Fuck. He sits up and his head pounds. Fatigue catches up with him.  
                He doesn’t know how long it has been since he burst out of the house. He can’t hear his father’s truck on the road, but maybe he’s just too far away from the road. He can’t tell where he is. Is anyone looking for him? Of course they are.  
                _Of course they aren’t_ , a voice whispers back.  
                Sollux peels of his jacket, but he’s still sweltering so he takes off his shirt, and then his pants. He’s sitting in the middle of a cornfield with only boxer briefs on, cut up, feet muddy. He just ran God knows how much. He feels ridiculous and stupid and—fuck. He thinks he’s having an episode. Or something. Something. He doesn’t know anymore.  
                Sollux hears someone breathing and fast footsteps and the sound of corn being knocked to the side. His heart starts pounding and he moves between two stalks of corn, sitting uncomfortably. _As if_ he’s hidden. He takes his dirtied clothes and lays them on top of himself. Shit. What is he doing? He’s delirious. He’s delirious.  
                “Sollux!” It’s Mituna. Sollux curls into himself, underneath his stinking clothes, on top of the dirt. He clenches his eyes shut.  
                The clothes are ripped off of him. Mituna’s face is blotchy and red, eyes bloodshot. His smile is watery and he falls to his knees beside Sollux. “What are you doing?” he asks. He forces Sollux’s head up and his hands are cool against Sollux’s heated skin.  
                “I don’t know,” Sollux answers. His hand flies to his mouth when he gags again. Mituna makes a clicking noise and stands.  
                “Here,” he says, handing Sollux his yellow helmet. “Wear this. You’ll feel better; I p-promise.” Sollux accepts and puts the helmet on his head. He shoves the plastic up away from his eyes. He feels stupid.  
                _Retarded._  
                Mituna then bends down and picks Sollux up. Sollux is reminded of how strong his brother is; years on the track team and working on the farm did him well. He’s still shirtless. The both of them are shirtless now. Barefoot. Only in underwear. In the middle of a corn field.  
                _Crazy Captors._  
                “You’re brother’s a retard.”  
                Sollux’s clothes are set on his pelvis. “Sorry,” Mituna says. He straightens out and smiles at Sollux. “Dad and I talked. And I’m going to take care of you, okay?”  
                “Okay,” Sollux says. _He doesn’t get it_ , he thinks. _Is he serious? Does he understand any of this?_  
                Mituna starts walking. Sollux looks up. Mituna’s chin is sharp, his neck is wide. His nose is kind of pointy and long, but all of the Captors’ are. His eyes are large. His hair is sleek, if a bit fuzzy from the humidity. His bangs swoop across his forehead. That scar crawls its way across Mituna’s skin.  
                Mituna was handsome.  
                Is handsome.  
                Sollux blinks. He remembers girls ogling at his brother, staring at him. He always wondered what that was about. Now, girls still ogle at him. But it’s not the same.  
                Mituna looks down. “You’re bleeding,” he says.  
                “I’ll be fine.”  
                Mituna sticks his tongue out. It used to be pierced; another rebellious thing. Sollux kind of misses the piercing. “‘I’ll be fine,’” Mituna copies.  
                Sollux closes his eyes. He tries to pretend that his brother is okay again.

                “I can walk, you know,” Sollux says numbly. Mituna childishly shakes his head, pushing the bathroom door open with his shoulder. He sets Sollux on the toilet lid. The bathroom has pale purple walls with tiles wrapping around the bottom half of them. A lot of the tiles are chipping, some completely gone. The house isn’t necessarily falling apart, but a lot of things need redone. Sollux likes it, though. He doesn’t know why.  
                Sollux watches his brother as he pulls the shower curtain back, revealing an old metal tub. Maybe he doesn’t give his brother enough credit. But then Mituna blushes and looks up, almost scared to talk. “Um, which way is on again?” he asks.  
                Sollux wants to throw up. “Turn it towardth the left.” He doesn’t look at Mituna: instead he focuses on a square on the wall, where a tiny tile should be.  
                After a few seconds the water starts to run from the shower head. Mituna makes a little shriek. Sollux continues to stare at the wall. There’s a bump, then a thump. Mituna sighs in relief and the water falls from the faucet.  
                Mituna walks to Sollux and Sollux allows himself to be picked up again. Mituna sets him in the bathtub, which is barely filled at all. The water is scalding. “I’m thill in my underwear,” Sollux says. He stares at his toes.  
                “Oh! J-jeeze! Sorry, bud.”  
                Bud. Mituna used to call him bud all the time. He doesn’t call him bud much anymore. Sollux peels off his boxers and drops them over the side of the tub. They plop to the white tile wetly.  
                Mituna sits on his knees, hands on the tub’s edge and Sollux curls up, side of his face on his knees. He stares at Mituna. His brother is really tall.  
                The water burns his skin but he makes no comment. It’s at the middle of his back, now. “You can turn it—” Mituna turns the water off. He looks at Sollux eagerly, who closes his eyes.  
                Mituna starts humming. Sollux recognizes the tune of Don’t Stop Believing, from Journey. “Livin’ in a lonely world,” Mituna sings quietly. He brushes some wet hair behind Sollux’s ear.  
                Sollux allows himself to be coddled. He allows himself to be bathed. _By a child_ , that voice from earlier says, back again.  
                “It goes on and on and on and on…” A finger pokes his forehead and Sollux untangles from himself. He leans against the back wall of the bathtub, inches from the faucet. Eyes still closed, soap is lathered into his hair. Mituna says, “When we were little…I used to give you baths all the time. Do you remember that, Sollux?”  
                A lump forms in Sollux’s throat. He remembers. “Yeah,” he answers.  
                “Big brother Mituna,” Mituna says.  
                “Big brother Mituna,” echoes Sollux. He tenses underneath the water.  
                Soap slides down towards one of Sollux’s eyes. A thumb wipes it away. “Sollux?” Mituna whispers. Sollux opens his eyes.  
                “What?”  
                Mituna pauses, his thumb moving from Sollux’s eye, to his temple, to his jaw. He pulls his hand away. “What do you want from me?”  
                _To be normal again_. Sollux frowns, “What do you mean?”  
                “I—Dad talked to me.” Mituna looks down at the floor, gripping the rim of the tub. “He kept on saying how much you g-guys care about me…how you’ll do anything for me. But…you weren’t there.” Mituna’s grip on the rim of the tub tightens, knuckles turning white. He narrows his eyes. Sollux’s eyes flick to the nail polish on Mituna’s hands, and then back up. Mituna whispers, “You didn’t say that. Why did Dad say that? He isn’t you. Or Pop.”  
                Sollux has an idea. Out of the entire family, Dad was the one who took the injury the worst. He didn’t understand. He treats Mituna like a baby and lets him do anything. He’s detached. Sollux read To Kill a Mockingbird last year, when he was a freshman. Scout describes how her father treats his children as “courteous detachment”. Sollux thinks that fits well, with Dad and Mituna. Pop and Dad fight about courteous detachment a lot. Except maybe it’s more of a treat-him-like-what-everyone-says-he-is detachment.  
                “Dad wanth to make you feel better,” Sollux says. “He juth doethn’t know how, I think.”  
                Mituna seems to contemplate this for a second. Then he looks up again. “Everyone—everyone always talks about how they’re going to take care of me. Why can’t I take care of th-them?” His eyes are large, still a tad pink. Mituna’s been chewing on his lip, because beads of blood are forming. Sollux hadn’t realized. Mituna looks eerie as he grows more panicked.  
                Sollux doesn’t know what to say. He swallows.  
                “Do you,” Mituna gasps, and Sollux sits up, water sloshing around him, “do you think Dad and Pop and the people at school would—would let me do stuff if I weren’t stupid?” Tears fill Mituna’s eyes. He raises his hands to his mouth.  
                “You aren’t thupid,” Sollux says fervently. Fuck.  
                “I know!” Mituna says loudly, pulling his hands away. He stares at Sollux, unfiltered. “I know—I know I’m not stupid! But they put me in that d-dumb class, even if I can do math really good! I’m _really_ good at math, Sollux.”  
                “I know, Mituna.”  
                “But—” Mituna freezes. Sollux sits up even straighter. He starts unconsciously rising from the tub. “He said,” Mituna says, “he said I was stupid, and then he… h-hit me. And…and since nobody lets me do anything that means I’m stupid, right?”  
                “Don’t talk about him—”  
                Mituna’s hands curl into fists. “So I should get hit right?” Tears gather at his eyes. “Right?” His voice oscillates.  
                “Thop,” Sollux begs, “thop, Mituna, pleathe—” Cold air hits his chest.  
                Mituna smiles. His fist rams into the opposite arm. Again and again. Bruises form.    
                Sollux scrambles to his knees, splashing water everywhere: out of the tub, onto himself, onto Mituna.  He catches his brother’s wrists with his fists midair. Mituna stops completely, and stares at Sollux, lips parted. Sollux’s fingers hurt he’s holding onto Mituna so desperately.  
                “I’m sorry,” Mituna says. His face crumples. “I’m so sorry Sollux!” He repeats apologizes over and over again. Then he looks up, tears clinging to his eyelashes. “I’m supposed to take care of you. I’m…I’m big brother Mituna.”  
                Sollux moves to the side, the water now lukewarm. “Come here.”  
                Mituna nods and steps into the tub, keeping his boxers on, and sits awkwardly, too large. His legs are too long. He sits Indian style, knees knocking the sides of the tub, pretty hands in his lap. He’s a giant child. Or maybe a child inside of a giant.  
                _Or_ , the damned voice says, _he’s nothing at all. At least not to you._  
                Sollux wonders what it may look like: fifteen year old mess of a kid and an eighteen year old wreck, sitting in a tub together. Some would call it weird, others, inappropriate, even.  
                Sollux doesn’t care about everyone else, though. Mituna looks away from the wall, which he was studying. He looks somber.  
                “You’re thill my big brother,” Sollux says. His Adam’s apple bobs in his throat. “You teach me thuff about video gameth. And you’re the only one I can talk to a lot of the time.” Sollux nudges Mituna’s knee with his own. His chest feels like it’s caught on fire. “You’re big brother Mituna, dude,” Sollux says. He doesn’t know what he’s saying anymore and if he believes it.  
                But Mituna smiles at him.  
                And everything is okay, for now. Sollux knows it will get bad again: it always does. But for now he relishes in the peace.  
                After the bath Mituna beats him numerous times at Super Smash Bros. on the Gamecube. And Sollux’s chest swells, because he didn’t have to let Mituna win. Mituna kicked his ass thoroughly on his own.

                Later on Mituna and Sollux are still playing video games, and they’re called down for supper. Mituna stands up and stretches.  
                “I beat you,” he gloats, grinning down at Sollux.  
                “Thave it, jackath.” Sollux stands up and slaps his brother on the arm. “You beat everyone.”  
                “Of course I d-do,” Mituna says. He turns around and walks out of Sollux’s room. Sollux can’t stop smiling.  
                He grabs his phone from his bed and texts Karkat.

_iit2 ok_

A minute later:

_IT BETTER BE, ASSHOLE._

Sollux pockets his phone and walks downstairs, dressed in basketball shorts and a yellow t-shirt. He enters the kitchen, which has white walls and black and white checkerboard tiles. When you walk in the counters and sink and stuff is on the right. The table is on the left. In the middle is the back door.  
                The door is open and the screen door is shut. Sollux hears bugs and the wind is nice. He can see the bee yard, the rows of white bee hives.  
                Pop is setting the table and Mituna sits with his helmet on, the plastic shoved up. He changed into a grey sweatshirt and new boxers after the bath. He grins when Sollux sits down across from him.  
                “I beat him a lot, Pop,” Mituna says, looking at Sollux.  
                “Oh really,” Pop says, sitting down at the head of the table.  
                Sollux glares. “I only loth becauthe you uthed Link! You know I alwayth uthe Link.”  
                Mituna smiles innocently and starts playing with his fork. “I didn’t know that.” He laughs under his breath and Sollux rolls his eyes.  
                Dad walks towards the table, carrying a big bowl of gravy. “I love biscuits and gravy!” Mituna exclaims, eyes following the steaming bowl excitedly. Sollux loves it too. It’s Dad specialty; he makes everything from scratch and they always put honey on the biscuits they don’t mix with gravy. He also only makes it on holidays, or when he thinks someone needs cheering up. And since today is not Easter or Christmas…  
                Sollux stops thinking and eats. Mituna’s messy, but he always was, so it’s not a big deal. At least he chews with his mouth closed.  
                Pop, the only stable one in the family, makes idle chitchat. Dad talks with him and Mituna drops excited comments here and there, but Sollux stays quiet.  
                “You ready for school?” Sollux looks up from his plate and realizes his father is addressing him.  
                “Yeah,” he answers. “I gueth.” Dad’s hair is a mix between blonde and orange. When Sollux was younger he compared it to the color that appears when you hold a jar of honey up to the sunset, and the dumb simile has stuck for years. Dad’s eyes are blue and his face is shaved clean. Both of Sollux’s parents are far from your stereotypical gay men—and Dad is actually pansexual—but Dad’s a pretty vain person. And even if he’s in his mid-forties, he looks incredibly young. Some of the girls, and probably guys, Sollux guesses (but no one is really open about that stuff here), like Pop. But everyone likes Dad.  
                “I’m not,” Mituna cuts in. He sneers down at the biscuit in his hand. “Why do I gotta be in the st-stupid class?”  
                Dad immediately turns to him, and Sollux rolls his eyes. “It’s not the ‘stupid class’, sweetie, you just need a little help. And you’re doing really advanced stuff in there.”  
                Mituna actually is. It takes him a little while to comprehend the material now, but he’s still a fucking genius.  
                Mituna huffs, scrunching his nose. “I don’t like the teachers. Mr. Harold smells gross and his mustache is weird. Mrs. McCoy thinks I’m f-five or some shit—”  
                “Language,” Pop says.  
                “I only like Miss Fielder,” Mituna says, looking up. His voice brightens. “She’s pretty and she doesn’t smell bad and she doesn’t have a mustache. She knows I’m not five but eight—eight—”  
                “Eighteen,” Sollux supplies.  
                “Yeah!” Mituna says. “She’s—she’s really amazing.”  
                Dad puts his fork down, turning in his chair completely. Sollux exchanges a glance with Pop, who raises his eyebrows and then continues to shovel horse radish covered gravy into his mouth.  
                “Well,” Dad says slowly, as if talking to a toddler, “you wouldn’t be able to see Miss Fielder if you weren’t in the class, now would you?”  
                “Yeah,” Mituna says, taking a bite of his biscuit, “I guess.” He grins, looking at everyone and then turning his head away. “You know, I think the other teachers jealous of Miss Julie—she lets me call her that, you now. _I_ think they wanna get it on with me.”  
                Sollux laughs hard and Mituna turns to him, beaming.  
                “Mituna,” Dad starts sternly.  
                “Aw, c’mon, Rich,” Pop interjects. He smiles and sticks his tongue out at Dad. “Lighten up.” Sollux makes a fake gagging noise and Mituna giggles that soft laugh of his, a hand covering his mouth.  
                Dad scoffs and flings a crumb at Pop.  
                Sollux leans back in his chair. Mituna smiles at him, and Sollux thinks he sees a knowing glint in his eyes.  
                The day started off bad but then ended well with a lot of ups and downs in between, in only a handful of hours. Sollux ran in a corn field and took a bath with his eighteen year old brother and had another fight with Pop. He internally shrugs. Just another day at the Captors.  
                _Crazy Captors_.  
                Sollux frowns.  
                “What’s wrong?” Mituna asks worriedly, snapping to attention, eyebrows curved.  
                “Nothing,” Sollux says. But Mituna still stares at him, hair sticking out from under his helmet. He purses his lips and flicks the plastic down over his eyes and picks up his plate and walks to the sink.  
                It’s all going back down.

                Later, at ten, Sollux is sitting with his DS, playing Pokemon. But he’s barely conscious of it; all he’s doing is riding his bike back and forth across a bridge. Someone knocks on the door and he looks up.  
                Pop walks in, dressed in sweatpants and a faded Cubs t-shirt. He shoves his hands in his pockets and stays stationed in the doorway. “What’s up?” His voice is soft, and Sollux likes that about him. He’s a man of few words, and everything about Pop is quiet. Or at least when he isn’t kicking you in the side.  
                “Nothing,” Sollux answers. He looks back down at the screen and finally leaves the bridge, heading into some grass. An Audino appears.  
                “Sollux.” One of Pop’s hands is on his, and the DS is closed shut with the other. Sollux looks up.  
                “What?”  
                Pop ruffles his hair. “You’re a good kid, you know that?” His eyes are officially brown but look like a bright, rusty red. Sollux’s chest swells.  
                “Thankth,” Sollux grins.  
                “One sec,” Pop says, and he leaves the room. He returns, holding something behind his back. From the doorway he throws a Wal-mart sack onto Sollux’s bed. Sollux crawls toward it and sits back down. He pulls the box out of the bag, almost fainting when he sees what it is.  
                “You didn’t!” he gasps. A packaged 3DS is in his hand, a black one with the Legend of Zelda design on it. The box says it comes with Ocarina of Time. Sollux looks up and beams at his father, who smiles at him, leaning against the doorway.  
                “Night, Sollux,” Pop says.  
                “Goodnight,” Sollux replies. Pop leaves and he jumps from his bed and rummages through his desk, finding some scissors. He rips open the box, dumping all of its contents out onto his mattress. Ten minutes later he’s salivating at the title screen of Ocarina of Time. He can’t wait to shove it in Karkat’s face.  
                Just another day at the Captor’s.

-


	2. Big Brother Mituna

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A filler chapter to add some background. There will be a lot of these. 
> 
> Also, I'm really nervous about writing in Mituna's POV, and because of that I won't be doing it much. Please tell me if there's anything inaccurate at all.
> 
> Edit: I missed a lot of typos...fixed them.

_The past haunts all of us, I think. There is always one thing everyone regrets.  
What matters is what you do after you regret something. Do you leave it be, or do you attempt to save the future—and is it ever too late to try?_

-

_Fifteen years earlier_

-

                Mituna has never been in the hospital half an hour from town before, and he isn’t sure if he likes it or not. Latula told him last month that some of the doctors may seem nice but that all of them are evil, and that the things around their necks are supposed to freeze you, and Latula also said that the nurses eat babies. And Mituna believed her because she went to the hospital before when she broke her arm.  
                She reminded him about it all before his Daddy came to pick him up from her house, but he’s starting to doubt her word. The first floor has a really cool gift shop and it didn’t seem evil at all. Mituna got to pick out a present for the baby, and he chose a black blanket with a little bee in the corner, because he has a blanket and his brother or sister will have one now too, so that means they’ll have something in common. Mituna doesn’t know what “in common” means, but Daddy said it so it must be something grownups say. Mituna feels like a big kid, thinking of the words “in common.” He feels so big he almost lets go of his father’s hand, but doesn’t. The hospital is still unfamiliar to him.  
                Daddy leads him down another white hallway, and Mituna begins to wonder how many hallways are actually in this place. But then they come to these shiny doors. Daddy presses a button and a second later one of the sets of doors slides open. A nurse walks out and smiles at them and Mituna cowers behind his daddy’s legs.  
                His father picks him up and walks into the shiny metal doors, which open to a real tiny room. The walls are green and there’s another panel of buttons. Daddy pushes a button and it lights up and the room starts moving.  
                Mituna presses his face against Daddy’s shoulder. “Daddy,” he asks, voice muffled by his father’s shirt, which still smells like the smoke used on the beehives, “am I still a baby?”  
                “Well, you’re little,” Daddy answers, leaning against the wall of the tiny room. He hikes Mituna up a bit when he starts slipping. “But you aren’t a baby anymore. Why?”  
                Mituna pulls away from his dad, pouting. “Latula said nurses eat babies. I was just makin’ sure that nurse wouldn’t come ‘n get me.”  
                Daddy rolls his eyes and shakes his head. He’s got tiny hairs on his cheeks and his eyes are kinda red. “Don’t believe a word that Latula says, okay?”  
                Mituna glares. “But she’s been to this hospital before!”  
                “Latula also said she act twenty-six worms in five minutes.”  
                Mituna’s eyes widen. “She was lying?!”  
                There’s a _bshhcht_ sound and Mituna twists around. The doors have opened to a much busier place. People are walking in the hallway and the walls are blue, the floors are tan. Mituna sees a lady in a white coat pass by, and there’s something around her neck. Mituna presses into his father’s chest again.  
                There’s movement and a lot of noise and Mituna doesn’t open his eyes. He can hear the plastic bag from the gift shop swinging on his father’s arm, a lot of people talking, and then a lot of machines. Somebody is grunting, another person is crying, and Mituna doesn’t it like at all. Finally, he hears a door close and he opens his eyes against his father’s shirt.  
                He pulls back, and Pop walks toward him, around a hospital bed with that really nice woman on it. “Hey,” Pop says, smiling. He reaches out and Mituna meets him half way. “So the baby’s here.”  
                “I wanna see!” Mituna shouts, beaming. He can’t believe he’s a big brother.  
                “Don’t you wanna say hi to Aunt Rachel first?”  
                Mituna’s lips form a big o, and he looks over his father’s shoulder to the woman in the bed. “Thanks for the baby, Rachel!” he says. She was his—Mituna forgets the word, but it starts with an s. Or was it a p? Well, whatever she did with his baby sister or brother, she did the same thing to him. Sometimes she comes over and hangs out with them, and plays with Mituna. She isn’t _really_ Mituna’s aunt, and even if she did whatever with him she isn’t his mommy. But she’s like a pretend aunt. Or something.  
                Her pretty blonde hair is falling from a bun and her eyes are half lidded. She laughs. “You’re welcome, Mituna.”  
                “You look tired, Aunt Rachel,” Mituna says. “You should go to bed!”  
                Aunt Rachel laughs again. “I will, honey. Why don’t you go see the baby with your pop? Daddy and I will stay here.”  
                Mituna frowns. “You can’t come too?”  
                “She’s tired,” Pop says, and Mituna looks at him, “just like you said. It’s a lotta hard work, having a baby.”  
                Mituna sighs, but says bye to Aunt Rachel nonetheless. Daddy comes over and kisses him on the forehead and ruffles his hair. Pop carries him out of the room, and the hallway doesn’t seem that scary anymore. The grunting has stopped and but Mituna is still wary of the doctors and nurses. Bells chime from somewhere.  
                “Do you hear that?” Pop asks. Mituna looks up at the ceiling, trying to see where the sound came from. “They play that whenever a baby is born,” Pop says.  
                “Did they play it when Rachel had our baby?” Mituna asks. His neck starts cramping and he looks back at his father.  
                “Yeah,” Pop says. “They played it when you were born too.”  
                “Cool!” Mituna exclaims. He announces to his father, “I’m gonna help people have babies when I get older!”  
                Pop laughs. “We’ll see about that.”  
                He steps through the shiny doors again, and they go down, but the ride is much, much, shorter. The hallway is the same blue color and Pop walks down. He stops at a large window, where a lot of other people are looking. Pop stands in front of it and Mituna gasps, pressing his hands against the glass.  
                Rows of babies sit inside the room, all wrapped up in either blue or pink. Mituna’s eyes travel over all of them. Some have tiny noses, other ones have big ones. Some have a lot of hair, others have none. A few are sleeping and a few are awake, looking around the place with their little eyes.  
                Pop points at one; it’s pale and wearing blue, with a black tuft of hair. It yawns. “See that one, Mituna?”  
                Mituna nods.  
                “That’s your brother. His name is Sollux.”  
                Mituna smiles. “Hey Sollux,” he yells, and shrugs off his father’s attempts to quiet him, “I’m your big brother Mituna!”

-

_Three years earlier_

-

                The next time Mituna is in a hospital, he does not like nearly as much. His head hurts and there are bandages across his forehead. Everything is too bright and too loud. It hurts to think. One of his eyes is swelled shut and he can’t understand anything at all. He’s so scared.  
                Doctors ask him how he’s doing, and the things around their necks actually do freeze him. He cringes away from the nurses, because even if he isn’t a baby he feels like one. The room he’s in has white walls, and the hallway, or at least from what he can see, is not a pretty blue. The food tastes bad and sometimes he has trouble eating. Sometimes he’ll wet his bed and he’ll get so mad at himself he digs his nails into his skin until he bleeds.  
                A woman with dark tan skin and a long black braid talks to him all of the time. How are you doing, what’s your name, and could you follow my finger please? She’s nice and her voice is soothing. She explains things in a way Mituna can understand—he got hurt really bad, and his head got hit, and with help he can get better—but sometimes Mituna gets sick of her, and he’ll yell and scream as much as his current state will allow and shove the pillow over his face so he can block it out. Afterwards his head hurts, but his head hurts all of the time.  
                Pop stays with him a lot and reads him books he likes, like Lord of the Rings and To Kill a Mockingbird. Pop smells like honey and smoke and it’s amazing, and Mituna always calms down when he sees his father, even if he’s still confused and even if everything still hurts.  
                The dark skinned lady talks to Pop a lot, too. Mituna hears things he doesn’t understand, like “TBI” and “the frontal lobe.”  
                Mituna’s little brother, Sollux walks in one day. Mituna throws the watery applesauce to the side—it spills on the floor—and sits up, wiping the mess away from his mouth. Sollux’s eyes widen underneath his glasses. He looks scared, and Pop stands up and puts a hand on his shoulder.  
                “Sollux,” Mituna says, “Sollux I’m—I’m so happy you’re—here!”  
                Sollux looks up at Pop. “What the fuck,” he asks sharply. Mituna wilts. He looks at Pop.  
                “What’s wrong?” he asks.  
                “Nothing,” Pop says, glaring at Sollux. He glances at Mituna. “Eat your applesauce.”  
                Mituna feels like his chest is going to cave in. His head hurts so much; he holds it in his hands. “W-what?” he asks. He doesn’t know what to do. Tears fill his eyes.  
                “He’th a retard, ithn’t he?” Sollux snaps at Pop, gesturing to Mituna. “That bitch—”  
                “Don’t call Dr. Kapur a bitch—” Pop says. Sollux cuts him off.  
                “—the talked to me. Told me all of this bullthit about how he hit the left thide of hith brain or whatever.” Sollux turns to Mituna, who whimpers.  
                “You’re a retard, aren’t you?” Sollux asks. He walks towards Mituna and rips out of Pop’s grip when Pop grabs his arm. Sollux stands at the side of Mituna’s bed and leans over. Mituna shuffles back, his heart pounding. Sollux grabs his wrists and pulls him close. Mituna shrieks.  
                “Don’t touch—” he pleads, incoherent, “—stop it!”  
                “Are you retarded or not?!” Sollux demands. His grip tightens on Mituna’s wrists. Mituna tries to breathe but he can’t, he can’t—why can’t he breathe?  
                “Stop—Sollux—” Mituna sobs.  
                “Sollux, goddamn it, let your brother go,” Pop yells.  
                Pop wrenches Sollux away, who struggles. “He’th not my brother,” Sollux yells, and Pop carries him out of the door. "I thouldn't have come, jutht like Dad said!"  
                More doctors come in and try to sedate Mituna. Mituna is so sick of doctors. He curls up in a tight ball, moving back until he hits the wall. Tears stream down his face and the wires connected to him get caught. Mituna gasps in air and the doctors’ hands are all over him.  
                “GET OUT!” he screams, tearing at the bandages on his head, and he screams until he doesn’t know who he’s screaming at, until he doesn’t know who he is, until his throat is dry and all of the tears and words and energy are gone, and then everything after that is black.


	3. Look

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hey!! this has half a thousand views and more already im so happy!! thanks a lot 
> 
> also please dont expect updates to always be this fast. they will probably slow down soon

Two weeks before school starts and five days before registration, it is seven am and during breakfast Sollux is sitting at the kitchen table, scowling at the bee yard through the back door, detesting all of the work he has to do today, when someone knocks on the front door repeatedly and obnoxiously.  
                Sollux frowns and leans back in his chair, staring at the door through the living room doorway. The person knocks again and he stands up, leaving his pancakes on the table. Dad and Pop are outside in the yard, but Mituna rushes downstairs with his helmet on and throws the door open before Sollux even steps into the living room.  
                “HEY ASSHOLE—” yells a raspy voice, just as Mituna demands, “Why are you being so fucking l- _loud_?!”  
                Then Mituna shrieks and shuffles back away from the door. “Sorry Karkat!” he apologizes.  
                Karkat Vantas waves him off, stepping into the farm house. “It’s cool, Mituna.” His white hair is messy and he flicks it way from his red eyes. Sollux smirks, crossing his arms.  
                “Hey douchebag,” he greets.  
                Karkat’s eyes flash and he puts his hands on his hips, dressed in jean shorts that stop below his knees and a brown shirt with a tiny hole by the collar. His sleeves are rolled up, revealing a couple of Band-Aids. “Oh _hello_ , dickface,” he snaps, whole body leaning forward, snow colored eyebrows slanted angrily over his eyes. Sollux snorts, walking towards the side of the couch. Mituna looks between them worriedly, holding onto the buckles of his perpetually unbuckled helmet.  
                When Sollux doesn’t say anything Karkat’s face reddens and he fumes. “It’s fucking _lovely morning_ , isn’t it?!” Mituna cringes at the volume of his voice and Karkat’s hands fly up, over his head. “It’s great! It’s perfect! I had to get up at six and ride my bike a whole hour to get here, because my good for nothing father and shit for brains brother are useless.” Karkat’s arms fall back to his sides quickly. He glares and Sollux tries not to laugh. “Do you know _why_ I had to ride my bike for a whole hour to get here, to the middle of fucking nowhere?”  
                Sollux wants to add that they aren’t really _that_ far from town, but he amuses Karkat. “Why?” he asks.  
                “ _Because this is the only fucking way I’m able to even see your face, you hermit,_ ” Karkat explodes, eyes almost bulging from their sockets.  
                “C-calm down, Karkat…” Mituna says.  
                “Yeah, Karkat,” Sollux smirks, “lithten to Mituna.”  
                Karkat groans. “You wipe that shit eating smile off your face, Captor!” He walks to the couch and plops down on it, leaning back. He glares up at Sollux. “I fucking hate you.”  
                Sollux smiles, shoving his hands in his pockets. “And you came all the way here to tell me that?”  
                “Yeah,” Karkat answers, “pretty much.”  
                “Well _I_ missed you, Karkat,” says Mituna, who moves and sits on the opposite end of the couch. He curls up, wearing jeans and a striped sweater. His helmet is crooked. His socks have tiny bees on them.  
                Karkat smiles at him and turns to Sollux, raising an eyebrow. “See, Sollux? Your brother appreciates me.”  
                “He obviouthly doethn’t know you then.”  
                Mituna laughs and Karkat scoffs, rolling his eyes, but doesn’t comment. Though Mituna says, “You’re wrong, Sollux! I’ll _always_ like Karkat!”  
                He sits, smiling, hands over his knees as Sollux and Karkat stare at him. “Thanks, dude…,” Karkat says, trailing off.  
                “No problem, K-Karkat,” Mituna replies cheerily. He stands up and heads for the stairs. “I’m gonna play video games.”  
                “Tell Dad and Pop I’m out with Karkat,” Sollux calls after him. Mituna doesn’t answer, but Sollux guesses he heard him.  
                “We’re leaving?” Karkat asks.  
                “Were we not?”  
                Karkat smiles and rises from the couch. Sollux follows him out the front door. It’s light out, and dew covers the untrimmed grass. Sollux is reminded of _that_ morning a few days ago, and he shakes his head, picking up his bike from the porch. Karkat’s waiting for him, already on the road.  
                “C’mon, asshole, we don’t have all day.”  
                “Thut up, jackath.”  
                They ride in the middle of the road, gravel crunching underneath the tires. The small northern Illinois town’s laundromat can be seen on the horizon, a tiny dot. Wind buzzes in Sollux’s ears. His glasses are skewered but he doesn’t care. He goes faster and faster, until he’s ahead of Karkat and Karkat’s yelling after him, the both of them rushing past cornfields, seconds from falling on their faces.  
                They make it to the laundromat, sweating and out of breath, in around half an hour. They dump their bikes by the door and walk inside, towards the vending machines. Sollux collapses on a bench and Karkat feeds the machine a dollar. A soda falls with a _clunk_ , and he stands up with a bottle of Mountain Dew in his hand.  
                “So,” Karkat says, leaning against a wide window, “what do you want to do? This place kinda fucking sucks.” Cars zoom past him on the other side of the glass.  
                “What, the laundromat?” The old man who owns the place glares at them both with a broom in his hands.  
                “I was kinda referring to the whole town, but whatever. This place sucks ass too.” Karkat pushes off of the wall and glances around the building with distaste. “Let’s leave.”  
                Back on their bikes, they exit the parking lot and take a left, riding down the busiest street in town. They pass an old shoe store, a gas station, and a book shop an old lady runs. Sollux has been there with Dad a few times, and she hands out free coffee.  
                The street, Thirteenth, is not only busy but long: the deeper Karkat and Sollux go the closer they get to what is considered “downtown.” The buildings gradually become more vintage looking: townhouses and apartment complexes like the kind you’d see in Chicago, but shoved in a small farming town. Sollux passes a comic book store a middle aged man runs and also lives in, and a bar called Kink that a chick from Joliet or something started a few months ago. There are a lot of empty buildings. The population of the town has dwindled considerably in the past few decades.  
                At the end of the street is the town hall, an old wide building with pretty windows and a lot of steps that people will lounge around on during festivals and shit. A statue of the man who founded the town sits in the town hall’s yard, and there’s gum stuck to him and messages penned with Sharpie along his legs. Sollux and Mituna used to climb on it all the time. Karkat tried, but he was always too short.  
                Beyond the town hall is a park, the river, and a bridge that connects the town to the interstate. Sollux and Karkat head down a tiny hill, pass over some railroad tracks, and come to the pier. The parking lost is bare, save for a few trucks with rowdy teenagers. Karkat and Sollux stop at the rocks (which aren’t even rocks but slabs of broken concrete) a few feet away from the tracks. Sollux leans his bike on a particularly large rock and then sits on the top of the rock.  
                “You have no idea how badly I wanted to get out of there,” he says. He looks out onto the river. The teenagers with the trucks are shrieking and obnoxious, touching the dirty water with their toes and then scrambling back up the slanted parking lot. Above them the pier sits with its three levels.  
                “Oh,” Karkat says, sitting against another rock, “yeah.”  
                Sollux looks at him and narrows his eyes. “What, are you gonna give me thit about it?”  
                Karkat doesn’t answer. He looks over at the teenagers. They all seem older than the both of them, maybe around seventeen or eighteen. Karkat’s mouth suddenly falls open and he stands up, letting the open bottle of Mountain Dew roll down the rocks. Sollux frowns, looking at his friend. “What?” he asks. When Karkat doesn’t answer Sollux scowls. “Karkat!”  
                Unbeknownst to either of them, the Mountain Dew enters the river and drifts away.  
                “Holy fucking shit,” Karkat says. He whirls to Sollux and pulls him down to the ground. Sollux grunts, falling next to Karkat.  
                “What the fuck, athhole?” Sollux snaps. His knee is bleeding and he prods at it with his fingertips. It stings and he hisses and pulls away.    
                “You’re fine, princess,” Karkat says sharply. He grips Sollux’s shoulder and forces him to look at the teenagers, peeking over the top of the slab of concrete. “Look,” he whispers. “It’s Ampora.”  
                Sollux’s face pales. Karkat seems to notice, for the grip on his shoulder tightens. Cronus Ampora is laughing with the others. His jeans are rolled up and his chocolate brown hair is slicked back with gel. He teases someone, sneering, and takes a drag from a cigarette. A girl giggles and swats at his arm. Ampora smirks and wraps an arm around her waist and kisses her. They shift, and Sollux can see Ampora’s hand groping the girl’s ass.  
                “He’s such a fucking pig,” Karkat says. Sollux nods, barely paying attention as he continues to stare at Ampora. His throat begins to burn and Karkat slaps his arm and Sollux finally gasps for air. “Shit, dude, fucking _breathe_ ,” Karkat says. His eyebrows are swept together in worry, despite his angry tone.  
                Sollux collects himself. He swallows. Thankfully, Ampora and the girl and their friends decide it’s time to leave, and they all pile into the rusty trucks and drive away. Karkat and Sollux scramble down and lay flat behind the rock, even if Ampora has no chance of seeing them.  
                When the sound of the trucks can’t be heard any longer, Karkat sits up. “Fucking hell,” he spits, staring after the trucks with resentment, red eyes blazing. Sollux stays on the ground, staring up at the sky.  
                _“Oh my god,” Dad says at the front door. Pop runs up to him, bolting from the kitchen._  
                “Did you find him,” Pop asks, gripping onto Dad’s elbow, “who—” Dad stops talking, eyes wide, staring at whoever is at the door.  
                Sollux closes his eyes, sitting at the top of the steps. His knuckles are white from holding onto Mituna’s helmet so tightly.  
                “Oh my god,” Dad repeats.  
                “Sollux.” Karkat snaps his fingers in front of Sollux’s face, and Sollux jolts and sits up, rocks sharp against his palms.  
                “Are you okay, dude?” Karkat asks, furrowing his eyebrows.  
                “Yeah,” Sollux says. He stands up and wipes his hands against his pants, taking his bike from where it was leaning. “I—yeah.”  
                And seconds later Sollux realizes, riding down the sidewalk and looking over his shoulder and back at the rocks, his bike was in plain sight. Ampora had to have seen it.

Tanaka Megido wants a lot of things. He wants a new suit to replace the one he’s had for five years, which was given to him by his father. He would like a nice beach house back in California. He would like early retirement. Tanaka would like to be able to send his daughter to college. He would like his other, older daughter to behave. He would like for his wife’s health to improve.  
                But most of all, Tanaka Megido would like for his mother to shut the fuck up.  
                “Are you there yet?” she asks in rapid Japanese. “How is Machi? How is Aradia? Has the traffic been okay?”  
                Tanaka bites back the urge to sigh and he smiles tightly, even if his mother is not here to see it. He leans against the hood of the station wagon and pinches the bridge of his nose, pushing his glasses up subsequently. “I am fine, Machi is fine, and we’ve been here for about fifteen minutes,” Tanaka answers, also in Japanese.  
                “Good, good!” says his mother. She talks about Illinois and the climate and the things she found out using what she calls “Gockle.”  
                “It’s ‘Google,’ Mama,” Tanaka says. “It is pronounced ‘Google.’”  
                “Eh? Really?”  
                Tanaka again swallows a sigh.  
                “Is that Baa-chan?”  
                Tanaka looks up, dropping his hand from his nose. His daughter, Aradia, looks at him eagerly, holding a box labeled ARADIA. Her nails are painted red and her hair, which she insists on keeping curly, is held up with chopsticks, a trick her grandmother taught her years ago. She wears a writing camp hoodie and a long skirt with huge brown boots. Her lips have gloss on them, something Tanaka has never noticed.  
                “Yes,” he answers, in English, tearing his eyes away from his daughter’s glittering mouth. Aradia smiles and sets down the box, holding her hand out excitedly. Tanaka passes her the smartphone.  
                “Baa-chan!” Aradia greets happily, “Nē!” The locks of hair she has left out of her up-do fly as she turns, beaming. She talks to her grandmother and Tanaka picks up the box she set down.  
                He stands up and looks at the large, white house which doubles as a funeral home. It has two stories and a large attic and of course a basement. The front of the house has a small, pretty wooden door and stained glass windows. Around back is where costumers, the relatives of the dead, will park and enter. The yard is overrun with weeds, something he’ll have to sadly tackle soon; Machi was the one who always did the yard work.  
                Tanaka walks into the house, entering a small foyer with grey-blue wallpaper. There are stairs right in front of him, and to the left is the kitchen. Straight ahead is a long hallway. Tanaka walks up the stairs and steps into another hallway with another set of stairs at the end. He walks up and finally reaches a white doorway. With minor difficulty Tanaka turns the handle and steps inside the bare attic. It has wood floors and walls and the ceiling is slanted on either side. A circular window sits on the opposite wall, up top, and it is stained glass too. Tanaka makes out a sheep, or something. The sunlight casts pretty colors on the floor.  
                Tanaka sets the box down and walks out, closing the door behind him.  
                Downstairs his wife is in the kitchen, arranging dishes from boxes in the cabinet. Her hair is up in a ponytail and her sleeves are rolled up. She sets a stack of plates inside of a cabinet and turns around as Tanaka walks through the doorway.  
                Machi smiles, dark circles underneath her eyes. Tanaka smiles back and slips his arms around her waist. “It’ll get better,” he whispers. She is much taller than him.  
                Machi nods, silently, and grips the back of his shirt.  
                The front door can be heard opening and closing and the couple turns around. Aradia is walking inside the kitchen, holding a box. She sets it on the flimsy card table in the otherwise empty room. “That’s the last of it,” she says to her parents. She strides over and hands Tanaka his phone. “Also Baa-chan says you need to learn how to not be so scary, Papa.” Aradia smiles, waves, and turns on her heel. She walks out of the kitchen, hair swinging behind her, and her boots make loud thumping noises as she jogs up the stairs.

Sollux pauses, stopping his bike and leaning against the handlebars at the corner of two streets. He peers forward, squinting his eyes. The street he’s on is a relatively wealthy one, with large houses that have in-ground pools in the backyards and sprinklers in the front, with glossy windows and manicured rooftops and grass trimmed down to the last strand, and with trees flanking the sidewalks, leaves sprouting outward to make the street seem like a green hallway. Sitting at the edge of the street and looking severely out of place is the old funeral home, which has been vacant since last January after the old man who ran it died, causes debated upon. Weeds are overtaking the front lawn and a few of the windows look in need of repair. The whole place has an eerie aura to it, which is exemplified by the building’s purpose.  
                 Sitting in the driveway is a U-Haul truck, and beside it a green station wagon. A girl walks out of the front door. She’s a little tan, and her hair is dark, dark brown, held up in a bun or something. She’s wearing a deep red hoodie and a long skirt. She walks through the front yard, weeds touching her thighs, to the driveway. She rifles through the trunk of the station wagon and leans back, holding with both hands an old chest that looks very heavy.  
                Karkat comes to stop beside Sollux and he too looks at the building and at the girl (who is now stepping inside the house again).  
                “Thomebody’th moving into the old funeral home,” Sollux states.  
                Karkat scoffs. “Good luck for them.”  
                Sollux turns to Karkat, frowning, “What’th that thuppothed to mean?”  
                Karkat rolls his eyes, leaning against the front of his bike. “You know how that old guy died, right? People say the ghosts from all the bodies that were in that place came one night and killed him.”  
                Sollux glares at him suspiciously. “I thought he thlipped on some ithe.”  
                “If you believe that you’re an idiot,” Karkat says, and he resumes pedaling, turning left. Sollux watches Karkat’s back, and then he glances at the front door of the funeral home again. He jumps, eyes flying towards a window. There’s a ruffle of a curtain but it leaves as fast as it came. Sollux shivers and turns and starts catching up with Karkat, put off. But he can’t help looking over his shoulder at the funeral home again and again and again.

“What the _fuck_?!” shrieks Mituna. Sollux looks up from his phone. His brother is leaning out of the gaming chair on the floor, PS3 controller tight in his hands. He yells at the screen and when Sollux glances at it he can see that Mituna’s mage has died and a troll is hitting someone else.  
                “Told you to uthe your bow on him firtht,” Sollux comments. Mituna whips towards him and glares.  
                “Shut up,” he snaps, helmet on. He slides the plastic over his eyes and resumes playing, grumbling to himself.  
                Mituna eventually gives up with whatever quest he’s on, and stops playing Skyrim. There’s a dip in the bed and Sollux looks up again. Mituna is leaning against the mattress, staring at him. Sollux scowls.  
                “What?”  
                “N-nothing,” Mituna says. He purses his lips and then sits beside Sollux without invitation. Sollux sighs loudly but moves over nonetheless. Mituna falls to his back and stares at the ceiling.  
                “Are…you…nervous about school, Sollux?” Mituna asks.  
                Sollux shrugs. “Thchool’th thchool. It all thuckth.”  
                Mituna hums. Minutes pass in silence, with Sollux texting Karkat—“AND *THEN* THAT ASSHOLE HAS THE NERVE TO FUCKING TELL *ME* WHAT TO DO”—“he2 just your brother kk calm the fuck down”—and Mituna staying still. Then, suddenly, Mituna sits up. He leaves the room without saying anything, and Sollux stares after him in bemusement.

After dinner and just around eleven thirty, as Sollux is getting ready to bed, he leaves the bathroom and pauses in the hallway, staring at Mituna’s bedroom door. It’s closed.  
                Sollux walks over and knocks. No answer. He knocks again; still no answer. “Mituna,” Sollux says. Nothing.  
                Sollux turns the doorknob and pushes the door open. He finds Mituna at his drawing desk, hands blurring over a piece of paper. Sollux bites his lip and takes another step, and then another and so forth. Standing right behind Mituna, he looks over his brother’s shoulder.  
                Mituna’s helmet is off. The sleeves of his thermal sweater are pushed up to his elbows. He’s listening to music on his iPod. His hands have grey smears on them and he colors something in on the paper rapidly. Mituna stops coloring and Sollux sees that he’s drawing another optical illusion.  
                Above Mituna’s desk are tons of them, posted on the wall with tape and thumbtacks. All of them are perfectly measured and colored in. Some are wavy, others straight. Some are so complex they hurt Sollux’s eyes, and he wonders how Mituna even drew them.  
                Whenever anyone asks about his love of optical illusions, Mituna will shrug and answer with a few words, usually “simple,” or “it’s easy.” It’s the same with Legos and how he builds tons of things. It’s the same with his helmet, too, and video games.  
                Sollux starts feeling really, really creepy, and he takes a cautious step back, but Mituna is too absorbed in the work to notice. After a few seconds Sollux dashes back to the hallway, and he closes Mituna’s door again, leaning against it for a second.  
                _“Kurloz is in fucking juvy, Gamzee told me,” Karkat exclaims to Sollux. Sollux’s eyes widen._  
             _“What?” he asks._  
 _“It’s’ cause he beat the shit out of Cronus Ampora.”_  
 _Sollux’s mouth falls open and he blanches. Then he swallows, and looks down at his shoes._

 _  
_


	4. Glad To See You

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I will probably come back and fix this up later, I just want to post it because I promised myself I wouldn't go to bed until I finished it. We're learning a lot more about Karkat and Someone Else Who Could It Be (lol it's not Kanaya). 
> 
> This also just hit 1000 views! Thank you so much, I never ever thought this would get so popular, especially in such a short amount of time.

                “But I want it!”   
                Sollux cringes and stays planted in front of the used PS3 games, refusing to turn around and watch. Mituna can be heard a few feet away, still complaining. Dad’s whispers are sharp, incomprehensible. Sollux swallows, and to distract himself he picks up a random game and flips it over, reading the back. It’s some cheap racing game with only a paragraph and after rereading it so many times Sollux chooses another game, making sure it has a lot of text.   
                At least no one knows him here. Or there are fewer people that do. They’re shopping in a place called Allentown, about half an hour away from where Sollux lives. It’s the Creekwell county seat and has a population of around 115,000 people, according to the last census. The county-wide high school is here, housing a few thousand students, give or take. Surrounded by small farm towns, Allentown is the most metropolitan area within miles. It has a mall, which Sollux is at now, and a Wal-Mart and other retail stores. All Creekwell, the town Sollux lives in, has is a bowling alley.   
                Back in the 1800s a man of the name Steven Creekwell came and started up a farm. Luckily for him his uncle was rich and a great business man, who helped him develop the farm and soon-to-be town. With the help of lucky heredity and a handful of slaves the small farm turned into a small town, and then over decades grew larger and larger, and Steven Creekwell and his uncle raked in the profit. Towns started popping up around it, but instead of growing Creekwell stayed the same size, as most families intermarried; so much in fact that for a long while everyone in the entire town looked alike. Thankfully, that passed, but there are still a few families that have been in the town since the beginning.   
                “Are you gonna buy that?”   
                Sollux jerks up, coming face to face with an overweight Gamestop employee. He has thick hair pulled into a ponytail and long sideburns and a goatee. He blows a bubble of gum and pops it, looking bored.   
                “What?” Sollux asks stupidly.  
                The guy sighs, leaning against a rack of Playstation accessories. “I asked if you’re gonna buy that,” he says, “you’ve been staring at it for like five minutes.”  
                “Oh—” Sollux blushes, hurriedly putting the game back on the shelf. “Thorry.”   
                “Uh-huh.” The employee bursts another bubble of gum and jerks a thumb over his shoulder, raising an eyebrow. “By the way, are those two yours?”   
                Sollux looks around him and sighs. Mituna has his arms crossed, pouting, as Dad angrily explains why he can’t have something, gesturing to a box in his hand.   
                Sollux leans back. “How’d you know?” he asks the man flatly.   
                The guy shrugs and pushes his thin square glasses up his nose. “I’ve seen you guys come in a lot. Usually not with the blonde annoying dad though.”   
                “Yeah,” Sollux says. “I don’t really want him here either.”   
                “Well could you shut them up?” the guy asks, crossing his arms. Another bubble of gum, yet he doesn’t pop it right away.   
                Sollux sighs, “Thure,” just as the guy pops the gum and knocks over some things on the shelf he’s leaning on and grunts, “Shit,” flailing to catch all of the merchandise.   
                Sollux huffs and walks across the store. “What’th going on?” he asks. Dad turns to him, surprised, stopping mid-rant, and Mituna glares at them both before turning away. Sollux can feel stares burning into his back. He shifts and rolls his shoulders.   
                “Dad’s being a total dick!” Mituna snaps loudly, keeping his eyes on the wall.   
                Sollux scowls, “Don’t be tho fucking loud.” Mituna whips to him, hair flying. His fingers dig into his arms. He doesn’t talk.   
                Sollux turns to his father, who finally closes his mouth. “Dad,” Sollux says, “jutht…don’t thay anything anymore.”   
                Sollux looks back at Mituna and holds his hand out to the side. His father passes him whatever Mituna wants and Sollux looks down. It’s a PS3 controller, one that lights up. Sollux looks back up at his brother.   
                “You can’t have thith,” Sollux says.   
                “But I want it.”   
                “But we’re dirt fuckin’ poor.” Sollux shoves the controller towards Mituna, who uncrosses his arms and takes it. “Put it back.”   
                Mituna scoffs, but angrily pushes past them nonetheless. Sollux slouches, wanting to get out of the store, the mall, maybe the entire country.   
                Dad is starting at him and Sollux narrows his eyes. “What?” he asks. He shifts his feet again.   
                “Nothing,” Dad answers, and he looks away. Mituna comes back seconds later and Sollux immediately walks out of the store, leaving them behind to catch up, with his hands shoved in his pockets and his head ducked down.

                Karkat Vantas _really_ fucking hates everyone, or at least the majority of the human race. A lot of people would call that unhealthy and say he has anger management issues and a load of other psychological problems, but Karkat thinks it’s only pure, pure, fact.   
                He scowls and leans against the passenger window. His shitty, generic, MP3 player with hundreds of songs he doesn’t even like anymore died about five minutes into the car ride. He lost the charger and it doesn’t seem compatible with anything else, so it can only stay on for, at most, seven minutes. And yet Karkat carries the thing everywhere, thinking that maybe if he jams the ear buds into his ears hard enough it’ll be quiet. Or maybe there’s a shitty MP3 fairy that makes shitty products miraculously work again. Karkat doesn’t know and he doesn’t want to think about dumb fucking fairies because he has a massive headache.   
                The window is cool, and it feels nice, and the sky is grey, which means it’s going to rain, and Karkat likes the rain. But the blurring cars on the highway make him feel nauseous, and what’s happening inside of the car isn’t any better.   
                “And then, and then get this, this _Republican_ has the audacity to say Mitt Romney is—”  
                Karkat groans and pushes off of the door, twisting around. “No one gives a fuck,” he shouts at his older brother. Kankri stares at him, hands in his lap, wearing another dumb fucking sweater, even if it’s fucking August still. He raises an eyebrow.   
                “Don’t give me that shit,” Karkat snaps before Kankri can even say anything. “You’re a fucking obnoxious holier-than-thou moron and whenever you open your mouth all that comes out is fucking lectures!” Karkat groans again and jabs a finger towards the older brunette. “And that goddamn Democrat club! Hey asshole! Everyone is sick of hearing the same shit! PS—your hair looks fucking retarded.”   
                What Kankri calls hair is actually a wavy mop of shit on top of his bloated head, in Karkat’s opinion; it’s always pissed him off, and so has his father’s hair, but that’s all probably just because Karkat’s albino. He used to dye his hair brown until Sollux told him he looked like an idiot. He wore contacts too, to match his dad’s dark brown. It never fooled anyone, and when Karkat thinks about it he wants to go back in time and punch his former self in the face.   
                “Karkat,” Kankri starts calmly, “your insecurities are showing.”   
                “Fuck you!”   
                “Karkat, go back to your seat,” Kevin Vantas orders halfheartedly, sounding bored and tired. Karkat huffs, but leans back, glaring at his brother all the way before turning to the front.   
                “You know what’s stupid?” he asks, and at no answers continues, “Our names. Our names are fucking stupid; all Ks. Like really? Really?”   
                “Your mother came up with the idea,” Kevin replies, suddenly not bored or tired anymore. His jaw pops loudly when he moves it, which he does when he’s angry. He has shaggy brown hair, a mustache, and is possibly the worst real estate agent in the world. He keeps his eyes on the road and grip tight on the wheel. His jaw pops methodically. He’ll probably get it wired shut or some shit soon.  
                Kankri sighs behind the both of them.  
                “That’s fitting,” Karkat says, “because Mom was a dumbass.” He narrows his eyes. “Don’t play the mom card on me, Dad, she was a total bitch and you know it.”   
                Kevin whips to his youngest son and Kankri shouts at him to keep his eyes on the road. Kevin turns away from Karkat, but glances at him through the corner of his eye. “I don’t ever want to hear you call your mother a bitch again,” he says. His knuckles are white on the wheel of the car.  
                “Fucking hell,” Karkat snaps, “whatever,” and he untangles his ear buds from his pocket and shitty MP3 player, and he shoves them into his ears.  
                  
                They go clothes shopping after that, hitting the JC Penny’s that’s connected to the mall. Dad dumps Mituna with Sollux and flits off somewhere, and Sollux is forced to put up with his older brother. They walk through the jewelry section towards the clothes. Mituna keeps on admiring the necklaces and rings in the glass cases, pressing his hands against the panes and smearing fingerprints.   
                “Cut it out,” Sollux snaps, not looking at his brother. He can hear Mituna huff behind him, still mad about the controller. “Thtop acting like a baby,” Sollux says.   
                “I am _not_ , faggot,” Mituna defends indignantly. Sollux rolls his eyes and doesn’t respond.   
                They make it to the clothes. Sollux doesn’t really care about any of it, and he picks up shirts that he’ll probably drown in and halfheartedly skims the row of jeans. Mituna chooses obnoxious striped rugby shirts as usual. “Are you ever going to fucking wear anything elthe?” Sollux asks. He sighs and checks all of the tags and throws a red and blue striped shirt back to Mituna. “That’th the wrong thize. Get a medium.”   
                Mituna quickly grabs the correct shirt, blushing. “Sh-shouldn’t we try it on?” he asks, turning to Sollux again.   
                “Fuck, I’m not going through all of that.” Sollux leans against the wall by a poster of a teenage boy who’s smiling too much. “We’ll jutht wait for Dad, I gueth.”   
                Mituna pouts but doesn’t do anything else. He pulls out his DS from his pocket—Sollux didn’t know he brought it—and turns it on. Mituna sits in the middle of the floor, hunched over, as the opening theme of Pokemon Platinum plays on full volume. Sollux notices an employee folding pants look at them strangely. He scowls, ignores her, and sits beside his brother, who is battling the Elite Four. Mituna makes little noises of anger, and Sollux glances over his brother’s shoulder. The employee is still looking at them, pretending to fold clothes. Asshole.

                “I don’t even know why we’re here,” Karkat snaps as his father pulls into the parking lot. “It’s not like we have any money. Can’t we just go back to Goodwill? Sheila said she has an iPod for me.”   
                Kankri sighs _again_ and slips out of the car, walking into the mall by himself. Karkat glares daggers into his back, into his dumb sweater. It’s eighty-seven degrees outside and the asshole has the audacity to wear a fucking sweater. Karkat really hates him.   
                His father gets out of the car too. “Come on, Karkat,” he says, leaning against the door. His hair is long. He’s wearing a t-shirt and jeans and a blue windbreaker, and these obnoxious cowboy boots. He’s stuck in the seventies. Karkat flips him off.   
                Kevin huffs and shuts the door and begins walking to the mall, too. Karkat watches his father’s retreating form, knowing this is bait. But he won’t give in, even if there’s no radio because Kevin took the keys, even if he’s already sweltering. He won’t do it. He _won’t_. He’ll stay in the car as long as he must.  
                But ten minutes later Karkat is debating leaving, and hates himself for it. It’s just so _hot_. His back is sweaty, the black t-shirt sticking to his skin. His shorts are damp. He shuffles a little, and lifts himself up with his hands. The cool air hits his pants, and Karkat is mortified. It feels like he pissed himself. This can’t go on any longer.   
                So he gets out of the car, locks the door, and slams it shut. He shoulders his backpack, which is only filled with his hat, his MP3 player, two notebooks, and a handful of pencils, most of them likely broken. Karkat puts on his hat, one of those plain baseball caps with the long bill, and the shade covers his eyes. He leans against the car, the window hot on his back, and stares at the mall. He doesn’t feel like going in. All the smell of the food court and all of the nice things depress him, makes him angry.   
                Karkat lifts off of the car and walks out of the parking lot, to the sidewalk of the busy street. He shoves his hands in his pockets and walks to the bench and sits next to a pretty woman with dark skin and her hair braided. She smiles at him, holding a little kid in her lap. Karkat smiles back and the kid squirms, beaming up at him.   
                There are no bus stops in Creekwell, considering it’s pretty small and only has a population of around twelve-thousand, give or take (probably take). However, Allentown, with a population of fifty -thousand, does. Karkat likes it. He likes Allentown as a whole much better than Creekwell. He likes the amount of people, even if some would say the place is also small. He doesn’t really know where he wants to go, probably to a big city, but if that wouldn’t work out then he’d be fine in Allentwon. He would get an apartment and be by himself. And he’d ride the bus everywhere. And he’d publish short stories in a magazine or something, and that’d give him enough money to shop at the mall. He’d buy so much shit at the mall.   
                The bus comes and Karkat stands up, and so does the woman. She holds the little kid on her hip and tons of shopping bags with her other hand. “Do you need help?” he asks as the doors to the bus slide open. The woman smiles at him. “Sure,” she says, and Karkat takes the bags.   
                They get on the bus and Karkat coughs up a few bucks while the woman flashes a pass. They shuffle down the aisle, passing sleeping old men and college students and other passengers. Karkat lurches forward when the bus starts up again and he holds onto a seat to steady himself.   
                The woman sits down, finally, near the middle of the bus. Karkat hands her her bags and she sets them on the floor. Karkat drops down in the seat parallel to her, as the woman asks her kid something. The kid, a girl with a Dragonball Z shirt on, kicks her feet back and forth. Her hair is in tight braids, Karkat isn’t sure what they’re called. The woman looks at him again, and Karkat looks away from the girl.   
                “Thank you, really,” the woman says, smiling.   
                Karkat shrugs. “No problem.” He usually doesn’t talk to many people, least of all carry bags for them. But something about the woman made him want to help. Maybe it was her cheap eye shadow, or her kid, or the tiny bruise on her cheek that you can barely see. Maybe it was the fact that the brands on the bags she has are all from the kiosks, not actual stores. Karkat doesn’t know.  
                “What’s your name?” the woman asks.   
                “Karkat,” Karkat answers. The woman looks at him, and usually he’d feel really uncomfortable. People always stare at him, at his red-violet eyes, at his pale eyebrows and eyelashes, at his ivory, greasy hair. But the woman isn’t staring. She’s only looking. Karkat wonders if people stare at her, too.  
                “I’m Shayna,” the woman tells him. She turns to her daughter. “And this is Keekee.”   
                “Hi, Keekee,” Karkat says. He isn’t good with kids.   
                “Hi,” Keekee says. She turns away and looks out the window.  
                Shayna rolls her eyes. “Where are you going?” she asks, and then hastily adds, “Oh, sorry—you don’t have to tell me.”   
                “It’s fine,” Karkat says, and it is. It _is_. “I’m heading to a friend’s house.”   
                Shayna grins. “I’m sure they’re lucky to be your friend,” she says earnestly. “You really made my day, you know?”  
                Karkat is shocked. He swallows. “It wasn’t anything, seriously.”    
                “Oh, yes it was,” Shayna assures. The bus starts slowing down, and Karkat glances out the window. It’s not his usual stop, and he’d have to walk a lot, but he suddenly wants off of the bus.   
                When the bus stops Karkat stands up. “I hope we see each other again,” Shayna says. She looks to her kid. “Say bye to the nice man, Keekee.”  
                Keekee tells him bye and smiles. Her two front teeth are missing. Karkat nods to her. He tells Shayna goodbye and she says that she wants to see him again once more. “I hope so too,” Karkat says.   
                But when he steps off the bus, he knows he didn’t mean it.

                “How long has it been?” Mituna whines, leaning against the wall. Sollux shrugs, irritated himself.   
                “Hell if I know.” He stands up and brushes off his jeans, and Mituna looks up at him. “Let’th jutht leave, okay?”   
                Mituna rises, then, his DS having died long ago. At his full height he stands at over six feet, whereas Sollux is 5’7. Mituna looks at Sollux, waiting. Sollux swallows and scratches the back of his neck, and he turns around and starts walking, passing the nosy employee. Mituna follows behind him.   
                They leave the store and Sollux checks his phone. It’s five-thirty. The mall is still bustling but it’s quieter, less noisy. There aren’t as many people. A few of the kiosks have been locked up.   
                “What do you want to do?” Sollux asks, standing in the middle of the glossy floor. Mituna crosses his arms, digging his fingers into his arms, scowling.   
                “I wanna go look for Dad!” Mituna’s voice is loud and people stare at them. Sollux closes his eyes, fisting his hands.  
                “Don’t be tho loud,” he grits out.   
                “Shut up!” Mituna barks. His hands are no longer crossed, but splayed out at his sides. He waves them up and down. “Shut up, shut up, shut up!”   
                Sollux is mortified. He opens his eyes and there are so many people watching. His short moment of peace is ruined, the anonymity gone.  He feels like he’s going to be sick. Sweat gathers at the back of his neck as Mituna continues to yell.   
                Sollux grips onto Mituna’s wrist and starts walking, pulling a struggling Mituna along, who keeps on yelling “Rape!” Sollux ignores him and quickens their pace, practically running. He sprints down the stairs and runs across the floor, to the bathrooms. He flings the door open and shoves Mituna in, panting, quickly following.   
                He slams the door shut and locks it and whips around. Mituna is standing awkwardly, simmering, shoulders shaking. The sleeves of his shirt are pulled over his fists.   
                “Help!” he screams, suddenly lurching forward and banging on the door, “I’m getting rape—”  
                “Thtop it!” Sollux screeches, cutting him off. When his brother doesn’t stop Sollux raises his hand and slaps his palm across Mituna’s face.   
                Mituna silences, shuffling back. He hits the sinks and sags against them, holding onto the counter with one hand and holding onto his cheek with the other. Sollux can’t find the empathy to feel sorry for Mituna, even when he starts making small noises, which escalate into cries. Mituna slowly sinks to the floor and curls into a ball, chest heaving. He sobs earnestly, still holding the side of his face.   
                “I told you to thtop,” Sollux says flatly. When Mituna doesn’t acknowledge him, Sollux sighs and walks forward and sits down, the gross tile cold on his ass.   
                “Mituna,” he says, poking his brother’s knee. Mituna doesn’t acknowledge him, so Sollux shuffles up to his knees and forces Mituna’s head up with his hands on either side of his face. Mituna’s hair is messy; his bangs are pushed back, and stayed back with sweat. His scar is in plain sight.  
                 “I’m thorry,” Sollux says quietly, “I thouldn’t have hit you.” Mituna sniffles, but keeps his gaze on the floor. “You can’t jutht thcream whenever you want thomething, though, theriouthly,” Sollux says. “What happened when you thcreamed?”   
                “You got mad at me,” Mituna mumbles, eyes still locked on the ground.  
                “And?”  
                “You brought me here…”  
                “And?”  
                Mituna’s voice quiets to a whisper. “You hit me.”   
                “Yeah,” Sollux says, “and I thouldn’t have done that. But you thouldn’t have screamed. Did that help you find Dad?”   
                Mituna shakes his head.   
                “I can’t hear you.”   
                “It didn’t help me find Dad,” Mituna snaps, and he finally looks at Sollux, glaring. Sollux pushes down disappointment. There is no apology, no “I’m sorry, Sollux.” There’s nothing.  
                Mituna rips out of his little brother’s grip but bangs his head on the sinks behind him in the process. Sollux sucks in a breath and Mituna whimpers, bringing a hand to his scalp.   
                “Oh, thit,” Sollux mutters. He scrambles forward and bats Mituna’s hands away, pushing his brother’s hair back, revealing a large red mark on his scalp. “Oh, fuck. C’mere, dude.”   
                Sollux stands up and brings Mituna with him, and leans his brother on the sinks. Sollux grabs some paper towels and stacks them on top of one another, then folds it all into a square. He soaks it with water and presses it to Mituna’s head.   
                “Doeth that, um, feel better?” he asks.  
                Mituna shrugs, and Sollux takes the wad of paper away, tossing it in the trash can. “Are you okay?” he asks.   
                “Yeah,” Mituna answers. He shoves his hands in his pockets. Sollux knows this is all he’ll get out of him.   
                They leave the bathroom, and Sollux is kind of surprised that guards aren’t waiting for them, since Mituna was yelling “rape” and all. But whatever, he’s happy about it. It’s one less thing he has to deal with.   
                Just as they walk past the fountain Sollux’s phone buzzes and he looks down, and then he runs into something that grunts “oof!” Solllux whips his head up and pockets his phone. “Jethuth, thorry,” he sputters. He holds out his hand.   
                The girl takes it and stands up. She smiles and Sollux’s heart stops beating. It’s the girl he saw yesterday, from the funeral home. He hastily lets go of her hand.   
                “Don’t worry about it,” she replies cheerily. Her hair is down, brown curls cascading over her shoulders and back. She’s wearing shorts and knee high socks and heavy boots. She has on a sweater, too, its color a deep wine red. Sollux wonders if Karkat would call her obnoxious. Her skin is fair and her dark eyes are slanted. She has lip gloss.   
                “Um—yeah,” Sollux says. The girl smiles again, then nods at Mituna, and begins to walk away. “Wait—” Sollux calls out after her. She stops and turns around.   
                “Yes?” she asks. _Oh my god she’s so cute,_ Sollux thinks, and then, _oh shit oh shit oh shit._   
                “You’re—you’re going to—the high thchool here, right? In—in Allentown?”   
                “Yeah,” the girl says. She narrows her eyes. “How did you know…?”   
                Sollux blushes. Mituna laughs beside him, but Sollux ignores him and tries to fix his mistake. “I jutht haven’t seen you before…figured you’re new.”   
                “Oh!” the girl says. She smiles again and walks closer. “Yeah, I just moved over here! Well, not _here_ —I live in Creekwill.” She puts her hands in her pockets.  
                “It’th—it’th Creek _well_ ,” Sollux corrects. “But, um, I live there too.”   
                “Oh, jeeze!” The girl laughs a very pretty laugh. “My bad. But anyways, that’s really cool.”   
                “It’th okay. And—um—yeah.” Sollux grins like an idiot.  
                “ _Sollux_ ,” Mituna whines, “you said we’d go look for _Dad_. And my _head hurts_.”   
                “ _Mituna_ ,” Sollux mutters.  
                The girl smiles again. “It’s fine, I’ve got to get going anyway! I hope we see each other again.”   
                Sollux immediately brightens. He straightens up and runs a hand through his hair. “Yeah, definitely.”   
                The girl turns on her heel. Sollux watches her, and right before she turns the corner she looks over her shoulder and waves. Sollux waves back, and then she leaves. He lets his hand drop.  
                Mituna stands in front of him and glares. “What?” Sollux asks. Then his eyes widen—“Oh, fuck, I didn’t ask what her name is!”   
                Mituna huffs.

                The neighborhood Karkat is in is a nice one. Actually, it is a really, _really_ nice one, gated and everything. Allentown Heights—it’s better than any place in Creekwell, and the mortgage is five times as much. The yards have sprinklers that water them, and sitting in the driveways are sleek expensive cars. All of the houses have more than one story. Some of them are new, others around one-hundred years old.   
                Karkat stops in front of a house, and tugs his hat a little lower. It is one of the older homes, with a white exterior, two stories, and a large wrap-around porch. Karkat leans against the gothic gate. He glances at the driveway, and relaxes when he sees there is no car. He walks around the yard and through the driveway, and shimmies over the fence (which is much taller in the back), and lands in the backyard. Then he strolls up to the backdoor and steps inside without knocking.   
                The kitchen is white with a lot of fancy appliances, and right when Karkat steps in he smells the scent of cinnamon. Candles are always burning around here. Karkat passes the island, where a candle is currently lit. He steps into the hallway, onto the pristine wood floors. He walks down, and peeks into the living room and the family room. There is another door, opening to a study, but it’s always locked. Karkat sees no one on the first floor. When he nears the stairs he shakes his head, hearing music.   
                The hallway upstairs is identical to the one downstairs, if a little wider. And towards the very end, next to a window, is an open door. As Karkat walks closer the music amplifies. When he reaches the doorway he snorts.   
                Gamzee stops playing, and looks up from the cello. He grins wolfishly, lax as usual. “’Sup, motherfucker,” he greets.   
                Karkat nods, “Musical prodigy.” Gamzee barks out a laugh.  
                 The cello is an anomaly, pretty and perfect among the mess of the large room. Clothes are in piles, unwashed. Bags of chips sit around. The walls are dark purple, and the thick curtain blocks any light from the window. Gamzee is sitting in the middle of the room. Behind him is his bed and to the right is the desk. It’s the only true furniture in the room, save for a beat up loveseat nestled in a corner in front of a TV and Xbox, both of which merely collecting dust.   
                Gamzee stands up and sets his cello against the wall. Then he stretches, raising his arms high above his head. His dark thermal shirt rides up, revealing a plane of dark tan skin and prominent hip bones. He’s also wearing cotton sweatpants that gather at his ankles. His dark hair is a curly mess, long, dirty, and untamable.  
                Gamzee strides forward, still smiling, and stops in front of Karkat, who leans against the doorway. Gamzee looks down at him, a good six feet tall compared to Karkat’s 5’3. As usual Gamzee is too close for comfort, only inches from Karkat. Karkat swallows thickly and walks around his friend and sits on the bed.   
                “Where’s your dad?” he asks, knowing the answer. He tugs at his hat again, and eventually takes it off, stuffing it inside his backpack which he drops to the floor.  
                “Old man’s at work,” Gamzee says, “where motherfuckin’ else?” He sighs and sprawls out on the bed, next ot Karkat. “What brought all up and over here?” he asks.   
                “I was dying to hear your drug induced rants over Satanism and how all other religions are supposedly bullshit,” Karkat answers. He looks down at Gamzee, who stares at him with a lazy half lidded gaze. “You’re high, aren’t you?”   
                Gamzee shrugs. Karkat rolls his eyes.   
                A few minutes pass in silence. Karkat looks at the instrument propped up on the wall, and then back down at Gamzee. He is curled up, and just when Karkat thinks he’s asleep Gamzee opens his eyes.   
                “You need somethin’ bro?”   
                “Play the cello for me,” Karkat says. Gamzee blinks, and then gets up. Karkat shuffles on the bed, not stopping until his back hits the wall. Then he lies down on his side, and beats down a blanket that obscures his view. He tucks his hands underneath his head.  
                Gamzee is sitting in a folding chair in the middle of the room, just like he was earlier. He positions the cello between his legs and begins to play. Karkat watches him, his long fingers gliding across the strings, and the bow moving back and forth as well. The song is a slower one, and Karkat hasn’t heard it before.   
                The music calms him, and soon enough he falls asleep. The comforter smells like cinnamon.

                As Mituna and Sollux walk by the same kiosk for about the fourth time, Sollux remembers that his phone vibrated. He pulls it out of his pocket. His dad texted him fifteen minutes ago.

                _At the food court, come eat._

                Sollux scowls. “You’ve got to be kidding me,” he mutters. He looks up and calls out to his brother, who stops and turns around. “Dad’th at the food court,” Sollux says.   
                They get there in a short amount of time and find their father sitting at a table near the middle of the area. He smiles when he sees them, but Mituna is having none of it, and neither is Sollux.   
                “Where have you been?” Mituna snaps as they sit down. Dad shrugs.   
                “Shopping.”  
                Sollux scoffs. “Can we jutht eat and go home?”   
                Mituna ignores him. “What did you buy?”  
                “I just looked around.”   
                Sollux groans.  
                “You’re a big fat liar.”   
                “I’m not lying, Mituna, now what do you want?”  
                But Mituna doesn’t acknowledge him, and when Dad looks to Sollux, Sollux pretends someone texted him, not wanting to deal with his father either.   
               


	5. Hello, Again

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If you have yet to notice, this fic is not just about Sollux!! Of course, he is obviously the main person, and the fic is named after him, but other things are happening too!! As this chapter shows. 
> 
> If I don't change something while writing, school starts chapter after next!
> 
> PS -- the amazing response urged me to write this very quickly!! People on tumblr keep on talking to me about it and last chapter gained over 200 views alone. I would like to thank everyone for commenting (I'm not new to ao3 but I've also never had to really respond to anyone, isnt there a PM system or something?? It's probably pretty obvious lol). A lot of you are talking about the setting of the story and that's most likely because I myself live in a smallish Illinois town. In fact I based the layout Creekwell with my town, I even have a larger town next to mine, about twenty minutes away. With a mall and everything. But it's not as tiny as Creekwell. 
> 
> PPS -- I am currently planning out a second humanstuc fic that I'll write after this one, I will post snippets and ideas about it on my LJ, more details later. 
> 
> PPPS -- I'll post a *spoiler alert*meulinkurloz*spoiler alert* mix in a couple of days so watch out for that. 
> 
> PPPPS -- I KEEP ON FORGETTING TO MENTION THIS. just to clarify the italicized words that sometimes pop up up top IS a person writing. who we will find out later 
> 
> THESE WERE A LOT OF NOTES SORRY WITHOUT FURTHER ADO HERE IS CHAPTER 5

_Everyone has their secrets. Some are just worse than others.  
I wonder what would happen, if anyone found out about mine. _

-

                Latula Pyrope taps away on her laptop, sitting on her bedroom floor with her legs crossed. The noises of Chicago—honking cars, angry shouts, sirens and laughing—sneak in through her closed window. Her back brushes her bed, and Skrillex is playing on her iPod, pounding into her eardrums and most likely turning her deaf. Her Gamecube is on, the controller next to her.  
                On her computer she has three tabs open: one is Facebook, the other Tumblr, and the last one something about Animal Crossing, which is what she is playing on the Gamecube. Her phone vibrates, rattling against the wooden floor. Latula ignores it; it’s probably her ass of a boyfriend.   
                She smirks, answering an anon on her blog ( _“Would you rather top or bottom?” “top, dud3!!”_ ), when Terezi calls in from the kitchen. “Latula,” she shrieks, “it’s dinner!” And by dinner Terezi means a shitload of McDonald’s their mother, a judge, picked up on her way home from work.   
                “One sec!” Latula replies. She quickly closes out of Tumblr and the Animal Crossing thing, and hurriedly scrolls through her wall on Facebook. Some bitch complaining, blah, blah, blah, a meme which Latula comments on ( _“h4h4 th4ts funny as sh1t m4n”_ ), more useless crud.   
                But then there is one post in particular, and when Latula sees it her heart stops. There are forty likes and more than twenty comments. She thought it was gone, why are people so persistent? It’s a video. Latula’s hand shakes and she absolutely does not want to watch it, but she presses the play button anyway.  
                 She sees the same thing she’s seen hundreds of times; over and over she has watched this for hours.   
                Afterwards, Latula slams her laptop shut and slaps a hand over her mouth. She scrambles up and out of her room and into the bathroom, where she collapses in front of the toilet and dry heaves. She’s crying, too, when she leans away from the porcelain rim. She flushes the toilet, gurgles some mouthwash, and scrubs her face with her sleeve.   
                When she opens the door Terezi is glaring not at her face but at her shoulder, but it’s closer than usual. “You saw it, didn’t you?” her little sister asks. Her intimidating tone of voice is canceled out by the fact that the ends of her orange hair are dyed with Kool-Aid, and the sweater she is wearing is neon pink with some crazy design.   
                “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Latula says flatly. She tightens her grip on the doorknob.  
                Terezi raises an eyebrow, not believing her.  
                “Fine,” Latula snaps, narrowing her eyes, “what will it take for you to not tell Mom?”   
                Terezi grins, and showing her sharp, animalistic choppers, she crosses her arms. “Fifty dollars,” she says, to which Latula scoffs. But then she also adds, “And your collection of Tech Decks.”   
                “What?!” Latula shrieks. Terezi is referring to the miniature skateboards she has, that you mess around with using your fingers. She hasn’t collected them since she was like fourteen, but still. “No way, man! No _way_.”   
                Terezi opens her mouth and turns to her left. “Mom!” she yells. Latula gasps and quickly puts a hand over her sister’s face. Terezi squirms in her grip, twisting this way and that.   
                “What?” Their mother asks from the kitchen of the apartment. “What are you girls even _doing_? Get out here or I’m using all of the honey mustard!”   
                “Okay!” Latula shouts, and then she glares at Terezi and shoves a finger in her face. “Shut _up_ ,” she mutters, and pulls away. Terezi looks extremely satisfied, hair messy, and Latula ignores her and walks into her room.  
                She drops to her knees and searches around under her bed, finally pulling out a plastic box. “Here,” she says, shoving the container into Terezi’s hands. “Just take it. I’ll give you the money tomorrow.”   
                “Whatever,” Terezi says, and she smiles and waves and saunters out.   
                Latula sticks her tongue out after her and stands up. However, instead of going to eat, she crawls onto her bed and picks up her pillow, and pulls out something from the case.  
                She stares down at her palm and her heart wrenches and she thinks of the video. Her fingertips trace over the grip of the tiny skateboard, and then she swallows thickly and flips it over. The deck is chipped, most of the original design gone. A large heart sticker, still mostly intact, is stuck in the middle between the wheels.   
                Latula closes her eyes. She curls onto her bed and cries, but she only allows herself a few minutes. She’s keeping a Big Mac waiting, after all.

                Meulin takes in a deep breath. It’s seven thirty in the morning and she stands in the garage. Inside of the house, her mother and sister are sleeping. The garage is dimly lit, tools and hunting decoys scattered around. In the middle of it all is Meulin’s mother’s truck.  
                 The keys are tight in her grip. Usually, Meulin would walk back inside and burrow back underneath her covers, but not today.  
                Meulin gets in the green Ford from the seventies and turns it on. She knows it starts up loudly, but thankfully her family sleeps like rocks. She pulls out of the garage, heart hammering. _Calm down_ , she tells herself, _calm down; calm down; calm down._   
                Meulin takes in a deep breath and pulls out of the driveway. With fall on the horizon it has cooled down some, or at least in the mornings, and Meulin shivers in the worn, dark purple baja hoodie she’s wearing. The sleeves are large and too big, falling to her elbows. She nearly drowns in the shirt, and it still reeks of weed and cinnamon. But she likes it.   
                Meulin drives around her neighborhood, eventually coming onto 13 th street. She branches off into the poorer part of the town, down south. The houses here are old. Paint chips off the homes, and a lot of the screened porches have duct tape covering holes. Weeds dominate yards, which are filled with little kiddie pools and bikes. The cars are all secondhand, beat up and most likely useable only half of the time. Kids stare at Meulin as she drives past them, their faces dirty, knees scraped, and wearing sleeveless shirts. Meulin pointedly keeps her eyes on the road, grip tight on the wheel.  
                She can smell fish from the river here, and she slows as she nears one house in particular. It’s blue, though rotting wood shows through most of the color. The grass is tall, touching the bottom of the front windows. The glass in the windows is cracked, and through it you can see things piled inside of the closed porch. The house has two floors and the roof is caving, in awful shape.   
                Meulin parks at the curb and turns off the car. For five minutes, she stares at the house, before mustering up enough courage to get out of the truck. She sticks her hands in the large pocket of the hoodie and wrings her fingers and gulps. She walks the length of the sidewalk, trots up the few cement stairs, and swallows again. She knocks on the door, three short raps, barely able to breathe.   
                She cannot hear anything, but knowing the person who lives in the house she is sure they are making a racket, and calling out to her, shouting obscenities, but she can’t answer. Finally, the screen door swings open. A ragged man stands before her, stinking of whiskey, cigarettes, and dog piss. The smell of something wafers out from the house: cinnamon.   
                The man says something, lips pulled back, revealing yellowed teeth stained with coffee and beer and poor hygiene. His scraggly hair is pulled into a ponytail, and his face is lined with deep wrinkles, especially his forehead. He’s wearing jeans and an unbuttoned flannel shirt with a white shirt underneath. Meulin reads his lips. _What?_   
                She instinctively signs, straightening her back as if it will add to her confidence. _I want to clean your house.  
                _ At the man’s befuddled expression Meulin says it aloud. She doesn’t know how loud or soft it was, but the man cringes so she figures it must have been loud.   
                _Why?_  
                “Kurloz,” Meulin says, still signing, and the man cringes again, “is coming home soon. I want him to come home to a clean house.”   
                The man, Kurloz Makara’s grandpa, snorts. He used to be a successful businessman, just like his grandson, Gamzee’s father, but snapped a few years ago and turned to drink. Kurloz’s father died somehow—Kurloz doesn’t know how, he was three, and his grandfather refuses to tell him—which lead Kurloz’s grandfather to take Kurloz in. His name is Rodriguez. His house is also a mess.  
                Rodriguez Makara sweeps his eyes over Meulin, and then steps away from the doorway. Meulin smiles and walks inside.  
                The porch is messy, piled with boxes filled with who knows what and other junk. Meulin walks inside, Rodriguez following her every move. The porch opens up into an open floor plan. The living room is to the left, with a couch and a TV. Dishes are stacked on the coffee table, crusted with food. Blankets are on the couch and a baseball game flickers against the TV screen. More boxes are in here, and so are baskets of unwashed laundry. The blue carpet is stained. A pitbull lies on the floor and he gets up and walks over to Meulin, wagging his tail. Meulin beams and pets him. She hasn’t seen him in a while.   
                Meulin walks into the kitchen. Empty bottles of alcohol line the countertop and dirty dishes sit in the sink, flies zooming around them. Meulin waves them away, but when she pulls her hand back they come again. The floor is dirty, not swept or mopped. A tiny folding table is positioned in the middle of the room, the top of it sinking. A bag from Hardee’s is turned on its side, and next to it is a lit cinnamon candle. Meulin puts the candle out and throws it in the trash, since it was almost all gone.    
                The whole time Meulin is evaluating the house Rodriguez Makara is glaring at her, chewing on his thumbnail. Then he goes into the living room and continues watching the game, and Meulin sees this as her cue to start working.   
                She ties her hair up in a ponytail and takes off the hoodie, figuring she will probably get hot. She folds the hoodie up and walks into the hallway at the end of the living room. She finds a linen cabinet remarkably empty and sets it in there, carefully. Now in her grey tank top that shows off her taut, brown abdomen and bellybutton piercing, she gets to work.   
                She pulls on blue yellow gloves she found underneath the sink and also a garbage bag, and starts collecting all of the trash, throwing in the numerous glass bottles and beer cans, and the Hardee’s bag from the table. It takes her nearly half an hour and three trash bags to get all of the garbage from the kitchen, living room, and bathrooms.   
                Meulin sighs and starts to tackle the dishes, setting them all on the counter, scrunching her nose. She fills up the sink with hot, soapy water and leaves the stuff to soak. Then she sweeps and mops the floor.  
                Afterwards, Meulin peels off the gloves and sticks them in her back pocket as she walks into the living room. She notices Rodriguez is still watching TV, but the game is off now, replaced with some old Spanish movie. She starts focusing on all of the boxes when there’s a hand on her shoulder. Not startled, she turns.   
                The old man is looking at her, eyebrows furrowed. He opens his mouth, closes it, and moves back to the couch. He comes back with a notepad and pencil and jots something down. He hands the pad to Meulin and she reads his messy cursive scrawl.

                _Don’t throw anything out._

                Meulin glances up at him, and then she writes down her answer, her curvy print contrasting Rodriguez’s handwriting.

                _I won’t. I’ll put it all in the garage._

                She hands the notepad and pencil to him. He reads it and nods at her, and goes back to the couch. Meulin stares at him and shakes her head.   
                She picks up the first box and heads out to the front yard, the wet grass running against her legs, turning left onto the driveway. She passes the unused car and enters the garage, opening the tiny rotten door with her shoulder. The garage is surprisingly clean, and all Meulin has to do is set down the box. She goes back and forth like this, picking up and putting down, over and over. Soon her arms begin aching. Goddamn, how much shit does this man have?   
                She is walking up the front steps when she runs into Rodriguez, who is carrying a box. He looks at her silently and then ducks away, to the garage. Meulin blinks after him. Together, they put all of the stuff in the garage, save for what is on the porch.   
                Rodriguez watches more television when Meulin finally deals with the nasty dishes, having slipped the blue gloves back on. Most if it she has to scrape off with a knife, even if it was soaked for around two hours. But she finishes, eventually, and goes to put them all away until she realizes the cabinets are filthy, too, filled with crumbs and tiny gifts from rats. Meulin nearly drops a stack of plates in her anger, and she groans.   
                So she cleans the cabinets with glass cleaner, since she used all of the soap, furiously scrubbing. The cabinets are painted white but a lot of it is chipping off, and the rag collects tiny bits of paint. Meulin doesn’t care, so fed up with how _disgusting_ this house is.  
                _Then_ , _finally_ , she puts the dishes, silverware, and pots and pans away, all of them neatly stacked up and organized.   
                Meulin takes off the gloves and throws them in the garbage can. She also considers lighting them on fire, but decides against it. She grabs the hoodie from where she left it in the hallway and slips it back on and takes a sniff. It still stinks, and she loves it.  
                She goes back into the kitchen and puts what’s left of the scarce cleaning supplies underneath the sink. She stands up, stretches, and a hand is on her shoulder again, but the grip is tighter; friendlier, in a way.  
                Meulin turns around, raising an eyebrow. Rodriguez stands before her, awkwardly. He presses his lips together and then hastily looks down. He writes something in the tiny notepad and gives it to Meulin.

                _The house hasn’t been this clean in years. You worked your ass off. Thanks. If you ever need a beer come and see me, okay?_

The “thanks” is bolded. He pressed harder when he wrote it. Meulin scribbles her reply, smiling, and he reads it.

                _I’ll keep that in mind. n_n_

He smirks and looks up, saying something out loud. _You’re a good kid._   
                “You’re a good man,” Meulin answers.   
                She waves and walks out of the house, to the car, leaving an awed Rodriguez Makara. It’s cloudy, still a tad rainy. Meulin gets into her mother’s truck. She turns it on and stares at the house she just cleaned. She bites her lip, closes her eyes, and makes up her mind. She pulls away from the curb and drives out of town.

                Meulin furiously signs to the woman at the front desk. She stands in front of the counter, in the office with the same blue walls, creepy fluorescent lights, and white tile as the rest of the building. The woman continues to give Meulin an agitated look, and Meulin scowls and finally rips a brochure from a nearby plastic holder and grabs a pen from a black cup. In the margins she writes: _I’m deaf. And I’d like to visit someone._   
                She thrusts the paper in the receptionist’s face, and the woman takes it and reads it in mock interest. Then she glares at Meulin and calls someone on the phone. A few minutes later she hangs up, writes something on the brochure, and hands it back to Meulin.

                _Someone who knows ASL is coming. Have a nice day._

                Meulin rolls her eyes and leaves the brochure on the counter and goes to sit in the tiny row of chairs against the wall. As she sits her nervousness grows, and she starts fiddling with her thumbs. She has never actually walked inside of here. She would flirt with the idea, sometimes even stop at the road and lean against the truck, staring at the chain link fence that surrounds the place. But she hasn’t seen him since he told her to stop coming. That was months ago.  
                Meulin swallows and sniffs the collar of the hoodie.   
                Someone walks in from the double doors. It is a tall woman, with black skin and an elegant ponytail. Her eyes sweep across the room and she smiles when she spots Meulin. Meulin grins back and stands, beating down her anxiety.  
                _Hello_ , Meulin signs.   
                _Hello_ , the woman replies. _You need help?_  
                _I would like to visit someone.  
                And who would that be?  
                _ Meulin pauses. _Kurloz Makara._  
                The woman nods. _Is your name Meulin?_ She asks. Meulin’s eyes widen.   
                _Yes._  
                The woman smiles, _I thought so_ , and she gestures Meulin to follow, who walks next to her through the heavy doors. _We’ll let you skip signing in._  
                They walk through the hallways. Meulin’s heart hammers and her palms sweat and she wipes them against the hoodie again and again. She wills herself to calm down, but she cannot.  
                The woman leads her to a room with windows and circular tables nailed to the floor. The walls are the same blue but this place looks a bit friendlier, with the sunlight streaming in through the windows. There aren’t any people inside right now. A guard stands at the door and his ominous presence stresses Meulin even more.   
                _Is there anything else you need?_ The black woman asks her. Meulin smiles and shakes her head, and the woman bids her farewell and leaves the room.  
                Meulin sits down and immediately bounces her legs. She looks through the window, only seeing an ocean of dead grass. She can’t do this. She really can’t. How will he be able to look at her, after she deserted him so? Even if he was the one who told her not to come anymore, it doesn’t mean she doesn’t feel guilty. Meulin puts her elbows on the table and holds her face in her hands.  
                Through the gaps in her fingers she can see the door open, and she leans back. Kurloz walks in and Meulin’s throat tightens, her heart drops, and her stomach clenches. She feels stupid, like some lovesick idiot, and it angers her to no end, because she and Kurloz are much more than that. They really, really are.  
                He’s lost weight. He was skinny enough before he came here, and now he almost looks like he has some type of eating disorder. And maybe he does—Meulin wouldn’t know. His dark hair is untamable as ever, but longer, falling perhaps an inch past his shoulders. He has a black surgical mask on to cover his mouth. Meulin attempts to swallow the lump in her throat.   
                His clothes are very plain and he sits across from her stiffly, expression unreadable. Meulin can almost hear the noise his clothes make and it sounds like crumpling paper. She wants to surge forward and hold Kurloz in her hands, because he looks so close to falling apart.   
                She forgot Kurloz doesn’t know sign language. Usually, back then, she would just write, not accustomed to it either.   
                “Hi,” she says, not caring about the volume of her voice. And the most miraculous thing happens. Kurloz lifts his hands.  
                _Hey, kitty bitch.  
                _ Meulin does not know what sound she makes but she knows it is loud, for she can feel the vibrations in her throat. She stares at Kurloz and she thinks he smiles underneath the flimsy paper, for his eyes crinkle.   
                _I’m sorry I didn’t come_ , she signs, simultaneously collecting herself.   
                Kurloz shrugs and Meulin watches every movement his hands make. _Don’t worry about it. I didn’t want you to see me like that, all motherfucking fucked up.  
                _ Meulin laughs, relief flooding through her. _I should have been there for you though.  
                You couldn’t do anything about it, baby.   
                _ Meulin leans forward again and presses her elbows against the table, holding her hands to her mouth. She takes in a deep breath and closes her eyes. Tears fall and she angrily rubs them away. She feels like she’s going to throw up.  
                Kurloz signs, _Don’t cry.  
                _ Meulin nods repeatedly, gulping. “Okay,” she says. “Okay.”   
                And then they converse about the simplest things, as if picking up right where they left off, as if months haven’t passed since their last meeting. Meulin mentions Nepeta and how she keeps on cleaning her guns, anticipating the hunting season, not much better than Meulin’s mother. Kurloz comments “ _she’s always been a motherfucking card_ ,” and Meulin smiles at that.  
                Kurloz talks about the juvenile detention center and how the food sucks. He complains about his therapist, who was the black woman that led Meulin here. _She taught me_ , Kurloz signs, and Meulin nods. Kurloz says his therapist always asks him about his mouth.   
                Meulin hesitates and then asks, _Did you tell her?_   
                Kurloz shakes his head. _Gramps_ _eventually said he knows though, so that got her off my ass or something I guess.  
                But he doesn’t know, right?  
                _ Kurloz smirks and shakes his head. Meulin feels like crying again. There’s a light feeling in her chest she hasn’t felt in a while.   
                Kurloz cups his chin in his hand and leans forward, inching his hand along the table. Meulin watches him. His fingers are long, nails chewed. A calloused fingertip runs along the back of Meulin’s hand. Their skin contrasts; Meulin’s brown, a result of her Indian heritage, underneath Kurloz’s dark tan.   
                _You should go; it’s late,_ Kurloz signs. Meulin frowns and twists around, looking out the window. The sun is setting; she had no idea. How long have they been in here?   
                She turns back to Kurloz and nods and they both stand up. Meulin stiffens when Kurloz leans over, centimeters from her face. Out of her eyesight he tugs down the flimsy mask covering his mouth, and plants a kiss by her ear. Meulin feels rough, scarred skin, some patches without. She fists her hands. Kurloz leans back, mouth covered once again, and they stare at each other.   
                _Nice shirt,_ Kurloz signs; Meulin smiles.   
                _Thank you._

                It is dark out by the time Meulin gets back to Creekwell. Though she knows her mother will want her home, most likely unhappy about taking the truck and the impromptu visitations, Meulin does not go home. Instead, she goes back to Kurloz’s house.   
                She gets out of the car, shivers, and walks up the sidewalk to the front door. She knocks again. When Rodriguez opens the door, now in pajamas, he looks surprised. He leads Meulin inside.   
                An ashtray is on the kitchen table. Rodriguez offers Meulin a cigarette, and against her better judgment she accepts, also using his lighter. She takes a drag and they both sit down, the smell of smoke soon filling the kitchen. The pitbull, Maurice, sits at their feet. Meulin occasionally leans down and scratches his head.   
                Rodriguez slides the notepad across the table.

                _What brought you over here?_

                Meulin holds the cigarette in her mouth and takes the pencil. She writes down her reason, and hands the notepad back to him, taking the cigarette out of her mouth and blowing out a puff of smoke.   
                Rodriguez reads it. When he looks up his lips are parted, and he looks almost confused.   
                Meulin smiles at him. Rodriguez smiles back, and with his leathery skin his lips look like a tear across his face.   
                She stays until ten.


	6. Healed and Whole

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> DAMN. I've been gone for like a month, and I apologize. I finally got my wi-fi back around the middle of November, and a ton of crazy ass personal shit went down, which set me back. Meanwhile, I was trying to write a chapter about Meulin and Kurloz's past, but it just wasn't working out. I scrapped it and I'll add it in sometime later. 
> 
> So have some stuff about Kurloz. I kind of ran with the whole eyeliner thing, and if you are uncomfortable with my headcanon, fuckin Deal With It. PS, I am not religious at all, I only went to church like five times when I was seven or something, and I'm an atheist. I'm sure I'll be inaccurate with all things religious. 
> 
> Also, this chapter has a little M rated stuff. Very minor but I've never written anything M rated before and I'm kind of nervous about it, to be honest. 
> 
> Also also, this chapter is kind of short. Sorry. 
> 
> Also also also, I posted this very quickly because I wanted to update as soon as possible. Therefore I'm sure there's a shitload of mistakes. If you see any don't hesitate to tell me about it....
> 
> Thanks for staying w/ me after a month's absence.

                His grandfather pulls up to the curb and parks the rusty truck. Rodriguez doesn’t move, and neither does Kurloz.   
                “You’re prob’ly expectin’ me to say somethin’,” Rodriguez starts, his voice rough. Kurloz stares at the glove compartment, unmoving. He blinks. He raises his hand and straightens out the mask around the bottom half of his face. His grandfather says nothing and lights a cigarette, leaning against the bench of the truck.   
                Smoke collects in the air. Kurloz breathes it in. He blinks again. “You ever gonna let me see that mouth a’ yours?” Rodriguez asks.   
                Kurloz shakes his head. A large bulk of silence arrives. It sits between the two Makaras. Kurloz can feel it brush his shoulder. It’s soft and malleable. The two men play with it—Kurloz staring, continually readjusting the flimsy paper covering his mouth, Rodriguez smoking. But at the same time the silence is heavy and hard as a rock. It’s unmovable. Unavoidable. Nothing will cut through it. Until.   
                “Kurloz,” Rodriguez says. “Kid, look at me.” Kurloz turns his head slightly. He stares at his grandfather through the clumps of his curly brown hair. Rodriguez is leaning back, his head on the back window of the truck, lolled to the side. He raises the cigarette up to his chapped lips again. He blows out some smoke. He presses his lips together, glances away, and then back at Kurloz. “I’m not good at this,” he says.   
                Kurloz nods. He knows that. He has known that for his entire life.   
                The sounds of cicadas pour in from the window. The humidity licks at Kurloz’s skin. Rodriguez sighs and scratches his cheek. Unable to look at his grandson anymore, he turns to the window. Kurloz looks back down at the floor.  
                “We’ve both been through a lot of shit,” Rodriguez says, surprisingly in Spanish. Kurloz knows he reverts back to it when he’s angry. He wonders if his grandfather does it whenever he’s high on any type of emotion. And then Kurloz wonders if his grandfather is sad, because he sure as hell isn’t angry. Kurloz realizes he’s never seen his grandfather depressed. Only happy and angry and drunk and high.   
                “I’m—I’m a bad man,” Rodriguez continues. “There’s no point in denying that.” He pauses. Another puff of smoke follows. “But, damn—I don’t know!” His Spanish rises in volume. Kurloz blinks. His grandfather shuffles around. Kurloz can hear a cap being unscrewed. He wonders whether it’s tequila or vodka or rum.   
                “Are you gonna be okay?” Rodriguez finally asks, after taking a swig of alcohol. Kurloz straightens the paper around his mouth again. He thinks of Meulin. He thinks of his grandfather. He finds himself thinking of Gamzee, too—the bastard—and he shrugs.   
                His mouth parts underneath the mask. He nods.   
                Rodiguez shifts; Kurloz looks at him again. His grandfather flicks the finished cigarette out of the window and knocks back more golden stuff from the glass bottle. The truck door creaks terribly when he opens it, and the small light near the rearview mirror flickers on pathetically, washing the interior of the car in a rusty dandelion glow.  
                 Rodriguez slides out of the truck, his cowboy boots crunching on the road. He pauses, holding onto the door. “You comin’?” he asks, in English. Kurloz nods. After a few seconds his grandfather closes the door. The light disappears and darkness ambles back. Rodriguez makes his way inside the house.   
                Kurloz promptly slumps over and lies on the truck bed horizontally, his legs slightly jackknifed to him because he’s too tall to fit. His dark hair splays out across his forehead and onto the light leather. Kurloz lifts his calloused hand out to the stick shift, and moves his fingertips around the ball. He drops his hand and it skims the thinly carpeted floor.   
                Kurloz lets out some air, from his mouth. It’s hot and it gathers at his mask. He’s still in the itchy, plain, clothes from the detention center: a white t-shirt and a pair of cheap jeans. Kurloz wants to change. But not only change, he wants to transform. It’s that time again. His heart wrenches and he thinks of Meulin, but he pushes that away.   
                He doesn’t get up instantly. He thinks about it for a little while. Will he wear a wig? He wonders if any of his will pass as natural hair; probably not. So now he has to think about arranging his hair some way. It’s long enough to put up in a tiny bun, but then his sharp, male jaw will be more prominent, and that won’t do. Maybe some loose pigtails. That’s feminine enough, and he’ll look younger too.   
                What about makeup: a shadowy eye or bright colors? Kurloz decides he’ll wear something neon—blue, maybe—and then a black dress. And colored heels.   
                Kurloz heaves himself up. He grabs his bag packed with his meager belongings and gets out of the truck and walks inside. He freezes, standing in the living room. It’s clean. Spotless, even. Kurloz walks into the kitchen and stares at everything with wide eyes. It smells nice. It smells lovely. A cinnamon candle flickers on the flimsy table near an ashtray. The counter is bereft of junk and the sink is empty.  
                Kurloz passes the backdoor on the way to his room and can hear his grandfather amuse their dog in the backyard. He’ll have to play around with Maurice when he comes back. He’s missed him.   
                Kurloz walks into his room and pushes the door open. He’s relieved to see it’s been left alone. The walls are dark. The floor is stained carpet. A queen sized bed is pushed up near the window, where a thick curtain hangs, blocking light. The floor is atrociously flooded with dirty clothes and trash. Some empty plastic bags lie around. A closet with a sliding door is on the right wall. There’s little furniture: his bed, an unorganized dresser, a surprisingly tidy desk, and a vanity shoved in the corner.   
                Kurloz throws his bag to his bed. He walks back out into the hallway and across to the bathroom. He turns on the light and takes off his beaten Vans. He turns on the shower, and undresses. He glances at a crack in the wall that’s been there for years, and steps underneath the familiar cold spray. Warm water is expensive. He showers with the surgeon’s mask still on.  
                Kurloz washes himself quickly and is out of the shower in less than five minutes. He swipes a towel from the closet in the hallway, having forgotten to grab one beforehand, and walks back into his bedroom. He turns on a small lamp on his desk. He doesn’t like bright lights.   
                Kurloz dries off his body and wraps his hair up in the towel. He walks to his closet and pushes through all of the ratty shirts and hoodies, and finally comes to the dresses: pink ones, purple ones, brown ones, red ones. They are color coded. Most of them are short and revealing. Kurloz picks out a short, straight, strapless dress. It glimmers with sparkles—tastefully. The dress wasn’t cheap. In fact, dresses are the only expensive things Kurloz buys. That and shoes and makeup.  
                Kurloz lets his hair out of the towel and dries it as best as he can, and then steps into the dress. He’s mastered zipping them by himself and he does so quickly, with ease. He walks to his bed and unzips the ruffle bag. He pulls out a package of masks and tears it open. He takes off the soaking wet one and the air hitting the lower half of his face feels unnatural. Kurloz’s hands shake as he quickly pulls another mask on. The paper is black. Kurloz regains his breath.   
                Calm, he turns and walks to the vanity and sits down. He sits in front of the mirror, with the poor lighting. He looks at his tan skin, wet hair, and the mask. His eyes are large and round. Kurloz blinks. He looks down and opens a drawer. His makeup is where he left it.   
                Kurloz pulls out a brush and some bright blue eyeshadow. Then he grabs some hot pink and purple, too, and liquid liner. He leans forward, elbows on the vanity, and applies the makeup. He begins with minimal foundation and moves onto eyeshadow, which starts blue and then, when going up, shifts to purple and finally pink. Kurloz puts on the liner, adding wings at the ends. He pulls away and he evaluates himself in the mirror and he feels pretty, but he isn’t entirely done yet.  
                He puts his makeup back and steps away from the vanity. He goes to his dresser and opens the first drawer. Kurloz pushes past socks and the like, and when he gets to the bottom of the drawer he grins. He pulls out some lacy black panties and slips them on.   
                Kurloz quickly puts his hair up in low side-pigtails, not bothering to look in the mirror. He rummages around his closet and finds some yellow pumps and puts them on. Then he straightens out his dress and looks in the mirror hanging on the back of his bedroom’s door.   
                He looks nice. The dress reveals a collarbone that sticks out. His arms hang at his sides limply, skeletal. His eyes are a shock of brightness and the mask around his mouth looks creepy. The shoes are nice. They pull the look together. His wet hair is already beginning to fall out of its hold.  
                Kurloz thinks he doesn’t look like himself, and the thought comforts him.  
                He walks out of the house without anything besides himself and steps into his grandfather’s truck, having grabbed the keys from the bizarrely clean kitchen counter. Before he leaves, though, he looks at the house, at the weeds sprouting from the ground, at the chipped paint and shoddy roof. He wonders whether he missed it, because, after all, he just got back and now he’s leaving again. Kurloz doesn’t want to think about it. He starts the car and turns the radio on and drives off.

                Kurloz leaves Creekwell. He passes through Allentown, too, and hits the highway. Few cars blaze past him, seeing as it’s late at night. His hair is effectively awful, frizzy because of the heated, damp air, and mussed from the wind, but Kurloz wasn’t expecting anything else. He’s feeling kind of happy, but sadness is picking at him, and he knows it will start bubbling up soon. He shoots over the speed limit. He needs to get drunk, high, or undressed fast—and more preferably, all at once.  
                Kurloz slinks through some tiny countryside towns, before finally coming to a relatively active one. He has no idea where he is. It’s not huge, but it reminds him of Allentown, and it’s probably bigger than Allentown, too. As he gets deeper into the city—or towards what he presumes is the center of the city—the buildings grow taller, the roads grow more congested, the lights seem brighter and more people are milling about, half of them uncoordinated and woozy and obnoxious.   
                Kurloz parallel parks expertly, having snuck off to Chicago more than once. He gets out of the truck and sees that there’s a parking meter. What the hell. Kurloz glowers, and looks around himself. He stands at the base of a skyscraper, some bank, and people flow past him. He spots a person with full lips, a strong jaw, and honey colored hair leaning against the bank smoking a cigarette, wearing a golden, sequined dress. He walks forward. The person narrows their eyes, arms crossed.   
                “What do you want?” they snap. Their voice is deep and feminine. Kurloz thinks: _hormones._  
                Kurloz opens his mouth, but then closes it. Right. He can’t talk. He runs a hand through his unkempt hair and holds up his pointer finger, _wait_ , and the person rolls their eyes and Kurloz jogs back to the truck. He finds a notepad and a pen in record time.   
                He walks back to the smoker and jots something down on the pad and holds it up. The blonde cocks an eyebrow and reads. They glance back at Kurloz and blow out some smoke.   
                “You need money for a meter?”   
                Kurloz nods. The smoker scoffs.   
                “Good luck with that, freak.”   
                Kurloz writes something again and holds the paper up. The blonde frowns. “Fine, whatever.”   
                Kurloz scribbles another question. The blonde replies, still guarded, “My name’s Sheila.”   
                Kurloz asks what pronouns Sheila uses. They grow less defended, slightly. “I’m a woman,” Sheila says. After a pause she adds, “Thanks for asking.”   
                Kurloz shrugs. Sheila drops her cigarette and smashes it with her heels. She uncrosses her arms and puts her manicured hands on her hips. “You can’t talk, right?”   
                Kurloz shakes his head. Sheila stares at him.   
                “Whatever,” she finally says, looking away, “you don’t need to.” She rifles through a small purse and passes him a handful of quarters. Kurloz puts them in the meter and comes back, and Sheila takes his arm and leads him down the sidewalk forcefully. She doesn’t speak. The lights from the street reflect on her dress, in her silky hair.   
                Kurloz is brought to a shady looking club. Windows are cracked. A lot of old men are there. The place is packed with people and heat and the stench of alcohol and bodily fluids hang heavily in the air. Sheila leads Kurloz down to a basement, wear it’s quieter and cooler and darker. He can’t see much, but he hears a door being opened and he’s shoved into the tiniest room imaginable; she’s shoved on an unfolded futon. Sheila is on top of him, and Kurloz dutifully arches his back slightly, lifting his chin up just so.   
                The manicured nails rake down his arms and then back up to his face. Sheila holds his head and presses her mouth against his, teeth and spit. Kurloz can feel her dick harden against his abdomen, and he whines pitifully, rubbing up against her. One of Sheila’s hands dig into his cheek and another wraps around his throat. “ _Shut up_ ,” she snarls. Blood is drawn and smeared with foundation. Kurloz makes no further noises.   
                Good boy.   
                Pretty boy.  
                Sheila forces Kurloz up and unzips his dress, pushing it down. She grins wolfishly at the panties, at his hard on. Kurloz looks at her drowsily, eyes half lidded and lips parted, hair hanging around his face like a sheet. Sheila situates herself against the wall and grabs Kurloz by the hair and forces him down into her lap, at the same time raking her dress up. Her nails sink into Kurloz’s scalp as he blows her, choking. He pulls off and licks up the side of her dick, and then takes her in his mouth again and she pushes his head down and next thing Kurloz knows there’s someone else behind him, binding his hands together with rope that chafes him. A plastic cock presses against his back and slender hands are gliding up his thighs and without warning or any preparation fingers are forced inside of him, and fuck it _hurts_ , and Kurloz grunts with Sheila’s dick in his mouth, and—

                He’s left alone on the futon, curled up and bleeding and bruised and naked, with three words thrown at him—“Thanks. Get out.”   
                A bag of coke hits his shoulder: a reward for a job well done.

                Kurloz navigates his way out of the bar, the whatever, with bloody arms and the bag clenched tightly in his fist. He’s sore and he wonders if what just happened could be considered rape, but he doesn’t even care. In fact, he wants it to happen again. He goes through alleys and makes sure to walk past people who look unsafe. He wants to be shoved against the wall and beaten and exploited. He wants someone to slap him and punch him and make him into a sobbing mess. He wants to beg for mercy, he wants to be corrupted, because—because—  
                He doesn’t know. He sells the coke and weasels fifty bucks from some idiot. Kurloz continues walking, lost. He feels like paying someone to rape him, to break his arms, but he comes across a Walgreens. The light blinds him and the clean, sterile smell confuses him. He walks inside, heels clicking.   
                Kurloz walks around the drugstore aimlessly. He fingers a small stuffed animal—a grey cat—and pulls it off the shelf on impulse. His stomach rumbles but he doesn’t want to eat—he can’t eat—and so he leaves the store with a cat and an empty stomach and several strange looks, thrown his way.   
                Kurloz wanders around. It’s gotten colder. Somehow, after he doesn’t know how long, he manages to find the truck again, just as the meter runs out. He gets in and turns the car on. Tears blur his vision. The truck is almost out of gas.

                Kurloz feels like going to Meulin’s. He starts thinking of her. He imagines her cleaning him up, bathing him, putting him in fresh pajamas and slipping into bed with him. She would kiss him and hold him and murmur sweet nothings into his ear, neither of them hearing the words she’d be saying. She’d be warm and soft and cute, her brown skin like milk chocolate. Kurloz can taste it on his tongue. He can smell her, too—pines and fruity shampoo.   
                But Kurloz doesn’t go to Meulin’s house. Instead, he finds himself stopping in Allentown, in front of a very familiar, very expensive looking house. There’s a luxurious car in the driveway. The sun is beginning to creep up from its place tucked underneath the horizon, making the pearly white paint shine. Kurloz slips out of the car and with every step he takes he thinks _Meulin, Meulin, Meulin_.   
                He walks around back and pulls himself over the fence with a grunt, and lands in the backyard on the balls of his feet. He pauses, pain shooting up from his feet to the rest of his body, and then the pain fades and he relaxes and walks to the backdoor. It’s unlocked, just as he was expecting.  
                Kurloz walks inside, through the kitchen, where a cinnamon candle flickers, and then through the hallway and up the stairs. He passes a room and hears someone snoring inside, and then he makes his way to the end of the hall. The door is closed. Kurloz walks in without knocking.   
                Gamzee is staring at him from the bed, on his side, like he was waiting for Kurloz, and he probably was. Kurloz closes the door behind him and straightens out the mask around his mouth. Gamzee blinks once, twice. The younger Makara sits up, his hair a mess, wearing a hoodie and boxers.   
                “Heard you up and come in,” Gamzee says groggily, slouched on the mattress with his hands in his hoodie pocket. Kurloz simply shrugs. Gamzee looks him up and down, and then stands up. He walks to his closet and pulls out an object. Kurloz sees it and something spikes within him.   
                Gamzee walks forward and Kurloz drops to his sore knees, letting his hands fall into his lap. Gamzee stands in front of him, looking down. He puts a hand on the side of Kurloz’s face. “Look at you,” Gamzee says, “such a fuckin’ mess. Runnin’ up to me. I know how you get. Little pretty Meulin can’t do it. Nobody can do it. And who do you come to? Motherfuckin’ Gamzee.” Kurloz shudders when his cousin puts the plain black collar around his neck. Calloused hands are in his hair, wiry fingers running through his frizzy, tangled locks. “I fuckin’ got you, brother. I always got you. Don’t you worry ‘bout a damn thing. You fuckin’ listening?”   
                Kurloz nods quickly, obediently, and Gamzee grins. He drops to Kurloz’s level on the floor and kisses his cousin’s neck, his hands still in Kurloz’s hair. He smiles against Kurloz’s skin. “Such a motherfuckin’ miracle,” he says, and Kurloz can’t help but agree.   
                He takes the collar off when he wakes up later, and untangles himself from his cousin. He leaves his dress on the floor and rummages around Gamzee’s floor for some clothes; the younger Makara is as tall as him.   
                Kurloz pulls on some cotton sweatpants and a plain blue t-shirt and some cheap sandals. He stares at Gamzee, before he leaves, and his cousin looks so undeniably young and vulnerable sleeping Kurloz feels a pang of sorrow. He hikes the thin blanket up higher situates it around Gamzee’s shoulder, tucking it under his folded hands. Kurloz makes his way out of the house. But before he leaves, he snuffs out the cinnamon candle, which is still waving diligently on the kitchen island.

                Kurloz doesn’t go straight home. Instead, he passes his house, and parks outside of a small, rundown church. It’s a short, rectangular, white building—more akin to a slab of space than an actual church. There is no steeple, or stained glass windows. There’s merely a narrow parking lot, square, easily manageable bushes, and a black sign with plastic letters, which spells out: “Then after he had taken the morsel, Satan entered into him. Jesus said to him, ‘What you are going to do, do quickly.’ John 13:27.”  
                Kurloz parks the truck and walks out. The sky is blue and bright, and Kurloz doesn’t know what time it is, but the morning’s service has, most likely, already ended, seeing as there are no other cars. Kurloz jogs up the cement steps and pushes the oak door open with his shoulder, hands pocketed in Gamzee’s pants.   
                The room is small but wide, with rows of wooden, cracked, worn benches. In the aisle between them a red carpet is laid out. A person is tidying up sheet music at the piano at the north of the room, on a raised platform. A priest is doing the same at a podium.   
                Kurloz slips into a random pew near the back and lowers his head. Sitting in the church, with his eyes closed, he feels safe, and empowered. He internally recites memorized prayers, and then pulls out a Bible from its holder on the back of the pew in front of him. Kurloz flips to a random, thin page. It’s Exodus. More specifically, 15:2.   
                _The Lord is my strength and my song; he has become my salvation. He is my God, and I will praise him, my father's God, and I will exalt him._  
                Kurloz puts the Bible away. He folds his hands together.   
                _I am the righteousness of God in Christ Jesus,_ he thinks, _I am God's property. Satan, you are bound from my family, my mind, my body, my home, and my finances. I confess that I am healed and whole. I flourish, am long lived, stable, durable, incorruptible, fruitful, virtuous, full of peace, patience and love. Whatsoever I set my hands to do shall prosper for God supplies all my needs._  
                Kurloz lifts his head and unfolds his hands. As he makes to rise, to leave, the priest passes him, and stops. “Hello,” he says, “can I help you?” Kurloz turns, and the priest flinches slightly, most likely startled by Kurloz’s appearance: the smeared makeup, the mask covering his mouth, the messy hair and meager clothes. But the priest stays, anyway, and forces a fake, kind, smile.   
                Kurloz shakes his head.   
                The priest nods. “Very well,” he replies. “Have a lovely day.”   
                Kurloz nods. The priest hurries away. Up in the front of the room, a great clattering of notes emits from the piano. The pianist dropped something and curses, picking up whatever items fell.   
                Kurloz gets up and he leaves.


	7. another author's note Wow

ok so <_________< i've been gone for like an entire month (again) and this chapter i am trying to write is not working at all 

and ive been thinking about the plot of this fic and the ending (which heads up is sad and will be revealed maybe sometime around the middle of the fic), and the more i plan it out the more i realize how disjointed and messy the beginning is (i.e. what i have so far). 

i suppose looking back this was really just a test drive; now i have most of the plot ironed out and i know where i want to go. maybe i should announce with all my multi chap fics it'll probably start as a trial run and then i'll post a new version later. 

aghhhh im sorry if this is a pain but like, i am only motivated to write if people are reading, and since this has gotten so popular i don't just want to drop this fic, which is usually what i do. 

and i think rewriting the beginning will get me motivated again, because jeeze do i want to finish this fic, there is sooo much you guys dont even know omg. 

  
so yeah, ill post the new version soon. this one will stay up. 

did that make any sense at all lol 


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